In an unprecedented decision, a Ukrainian court has ordered a hospital to pay half a million hryvnia ($62,000) to a family whose premature newborn was infected with HIV through an intravenous injection performed by staff during treatment 16 years ago.The long battle between the Rudneva Dnipropetrovsk City Children’s Clinical Hospital No. 3 and the family of the child, born in the summer of 1997, came to an end on May 23, when the Appellate Court of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast increased the previous restitution order from Hr 130,000 to Hr 500,000.
Human rights groups lauded the court’s decision, which they note is the first of its kind in the former Soviet country.
Karen Madoian, a spokesman for International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post that the decision was “an important one for Ukraine and Ukrainians living with HIV.”
Andriy Andrushkiv, a spokesperson for the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV, the largest organization representing the interests of HIV-positive Ukrainians, said the court’s decision was a major step forward for the community of some 130,000 people living with HIV as well as Ukraine, where those living with the virus are highly discriminated against and stigmatized.
But organizations and lawyers were quick to point out that Ukraine’s civil law legal system does not weigh judicial precedent when deciding cases.
Still, the case has the potential to influence others in the future, says Oleg Nesinov, the lawyer working with the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group who represented the plaintiff in the case.
The court’s decision came into force on the date of its delivery, but may be appealed in cassation within 20 days.
Nesinov told the Kyiv Post that there is a fair chance the hospital will appeal, but emphasized that the ruling is already in force.
Testimony
The court’s decision rested heavily on the health records of the child and the hand-written testimony of the infected girl’s mother, who describes in egregious detail the horrific conditions in which she and her child were placed during a one-month stay at Rudneva Dnipropetrovsk City Children’s Clinical Hospital No. 3 between July 9 and August 4, 1997, where they were transferred after the birth in the maternity hospital.
The two of them were repeatedly neglected and the hospital was “hell,” she writes. The incubators in the ward for prematurely born infants were either too hot or too cold, nurses used the same pipettes to clean the babies’ noses and in one case she observed a nurse performing a blood transfusion on a child atop a windowsill.
What’s more, “the medical staff were alcoholics,” she writes. “Nurses were drunk while working… and I saw a box filled with empty alcoholic drink bottles.” And when an infant who was crying wouldn’t quit, a nurse shouted at it to “shut up, bitch!”
She recalls every mother having conflicts with the medical staff, “but nobody wrote complaints, because they were afraid that the medical staff will hurt their children.”
In December 1998, she says, medical staff came to the family’s home to conduct what they told her was a routine blood test for hepatitis on her child. She was shocked three days later when doctors informed her that the child was HIV positive.
“I felt very bad,” the mother writes. “I cried and asked myself ‘How long will my child live?’”
It was discovered around that time that at least two other infants present in the ward in the summer of 1997 had contracted HIV through intravenous injections or blood transfusions. It is from one of those infected that the infant child involved in this case is thought to have contracted the virus, having herself endured numerous injections and transfusions.
Related cases
Andrushkiv told the Kyiv Post that court cases such as this are rare, and outcomes in favor of HIV-positive people even rarer.
“About 99 percent of the time HIV-positive people choose not to prosecute or sue,” he said. “Instead, they move to a new town or usually a village, where they can live (without people knowing their past).”
In another landmark HIV-related case of its kind, a Simferopol, Crimea court in January ruled in favor of a foster mother who sued a nurse for disclosing her eight-year-old son’s HIV-positive status, which led to the boy being ridiculed at school and the family to relocate.
The nurse was found guilty of disclosing medical information under the criminal code and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of Hr 1,700.
Furthermore, the court deprived the nurse of the right to work in the medical field for one year.
Paying up
While the Simferopol court decision was executed without much difficulty, as the amount of restitution was small, the more recent Dnipropetrovsk ruling could prove to be harder.
“Even with this decision, it may be difficult for (Rudneva Dnipropetrovsk City Children’s Clinical Hospital No. 3) to pay the 500,000 hryvnia that it should, because it is not a private hospital,” Andrushkiv said.
But Nesinov told the Kyiv Post that arrangements are already in the works to ensure the money awarded to the mother is paid. As for her, he said, she’s tired from the long fight, but very pleased with the outcome.
Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
