Parents of baby Rodrigo – the little boy born seven months ago with no eyes, no nose and part of his cranium missing as well as one of the hemispheres of his brain – say they are shocked and disgusted the doctor who failed to detect these abnormalities has only been suspended for five years.
They told tabloid Correio da Manhã that they haven’t even been told of the sanction by the country’s medical council. But the very least they were hoping for was that Dr Artur Carvalho would be struck off once and for all.
“No one can pay for the suffering he caused so many families”, Marlene told the paper, saying she realised jail was not an option.
Dr Carvalho has been barred from practising since this case emerged, and with it a number of others that had never managed previously to get ‘noticed’ by the press (click here).
As Marlene told CM, it’s ironic that she learnt of the doctor’s censure through a newspaper – but then it is thanks to a newspaper that the dismal case became a national scandal (click here).
Meantime head of the doctor’s association Miguel Guimarães has said that a number of the other cases in which Dr Carvalho is understood to have missed serious anomalies in ante-natal consultations “should have decisions by the end of the month”.
