Doctor, 300 Deaths Possibly Linked in Brazil
A Brazilian doctor has been charged with killing seven patients but may be linked to over 300 deaths while she was in charge of the Intensive Care Unit. Dr. Virginia Soares de Souza and seven members of her medical team are currently under investigation for the possible murders.
"I want to clear the intensive care unit. It's making me itch," de Souza said in a phone call that was wiretapped by police and released to the media. "Unfortunately, our mission is to be go-betweens on the springboard to the next life."
De Souza and her team are believed to have administered a muscle relaxer to patients dependent on artificial respiration, and then turning down the amount of oxygen they received. That, in turn, caused the patients to suffocate and die.
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"We already have more than 20 cases established, and there are nearly 300 more that we are looking into," Dr. Mario Lobato, the chief investigator assigned to the case, said on Globo TV's Fantastico program.
"They all have the same modus operandi, the same relationship between the drug and the death, and the timing," Lobato added.
While prosecutors believe that de Souza was responsible for the plan to "clear the intensive care unit," she did not work alone. At least seven members of her medical team have been charged in connection with the murders and it's believed that de Souza gave them specific instructions as to who was to live and who was to die when she was away from the hospital.
"We will soon prove that everything that took place in the ICU is justified by the medical literature," de Souza's lawyer, Elias Mattar Assad, told Globo.
De Souza was arrested in February but released on bail just last week; prosecutors want her re-arrested and held in custody due to the amount of deaths and her probable leadership role.
Prosecutors and Lobato are working together to go through seven years' worth of medical records.
