Dr Horror, as he was dubbed by the tabloid press, can practice no more.
The obstetrician on whose watch babies were born with incapacitating handicaps and malformations – most recently including a little boy born without a face – has at last been ‘struck off’.
Say reports today, the disciplinary board of the southern-regional branch of the doctors association (Ordem dos Médicos) considered five complaints against Artur Carvalho, and for each one delivered a five-year-suspension.
To top the rulings, however, the board issued a ‘common dispatch’ applying the maximum sanction: expulsion.
This won’t be an end to the matter. Next up will be the Public Ministry inquiry which, for now, has not moved forwards.
When it does, the mother of baby Rodrigo – born in Setúbal last October without eyes, a nose and part of his brain – says she hopes Carvalho receives a prison term.
“I feel happy”, she said, referring to the decision by the disciplinary board. “In part, justice has been done. But there has to be a legal case. I want him (Artur Carvalho) to be sent to jail”.
The case of battling Rodrigo shocked the nation last year when his parents were told he wouldn’t survive beyond a few days.
The child will be eight months old this Sunday.
Tragically, specialists have stressed there is very little clinically that can be done to help his development which will always be seriously compromised.
His parents were told throughout their son’s ante-natal screening that everyone was ‘fine’ with his development, as were numerous other parents of babies born with malformations that should have been clearly interpreted from routine ultrasound scans (click here).
Says Observador, Artur Carvalho is entitled to appeal against his expulsion – in which case the issue would be bounced forwards to the doctors association’s Superior Council and then potentially on to ‘administrative courts’.
