It has taken 19 years, but a widow fighting for justice following the death of her husband after surgery to remove polyps from his nose (normally a straightforward procedure) has at last seen the European Court of Human Rights rule in her favour.
The panel of judges has set damages at €23,000.
To have got to the ECHR means that judges here failed to accept the woman’s case.
Say reports, the dead man was operated in Hospital de Vila Nova de Gaia and died in Hospital de Santo António, in Porto.
The background to this story involves a previous judgement where ECHR judges awarded the widow €34,000 for what they consider to have been negligence in a “dysfunctional” State hospital that deprived her husband of the access to appropriate emergency specialist care.
The State then appealed, thus damages have now been reduced by €11,000.
