“I’m not ashamed”: the reaction of Kaliningrad doctors to the harsh sentence struck

Zero emotions – this is how Elena Belaya’s speech in the last word can be characterized. Although there are reasons to be nervous at and. about. the head physician of the 4th maternity hospital of Kaliningrad is more than enough. September 6 is the final court day in the case of the Kaliningrad doctors. It remains only the last word of the defendants and the announcement of the verdict. As expected, both events took place on the same day. About the case read our article.

In her three-minute speech, Elena Belaya, who, together with her colleague, pediatric resuscitator Elina Sushkevich, was previously found guilty of murder by a jury, managed to go through the long-term clinical practice of her medical institution and accuse everyone and everything of pressure on the jury. It’s no joke – the case is being re-examined. And if the first attempt to convict doctors in their small homeland ended in a verdict of not guilty, then in the Moscow region it is the prosecutor’s office that celebrates the victory. The panel of people’s judges did not find a single clue to consider them deserving of indulgence.

“I consider the jury’s verdict unfair. There was no murder. Throughout the trial, there was tremendous pressure on the jury from the prosecution. This pressure was strengthened by the presiding judge,” Belaya said in a calm tone.

The leitmotif of Elena Belaya’s speech is this: children in this maternity hospital have died before. Belaya recalled three tragic cases since 2014. Every time newborns were born “heavy”.

The question is, what do the dramas of past years have to do with the death of baby Akhmedov in the fall of 2018? According to the defendant, the most direct. It turns out that it was about these three cases that Belaya – according to her version – spoke at an emergency meeting, where she “sanded” her subordinates for registering the child as live born.

Recall that the audio recording of the emergency meeting, which was made on a mobile phone by the maternity hospital doctor Tatyana Kosareva, became key evidence in the case of Kaliningrad doctors. But Belaya does not leave attempts to justify herself: as if she was not talking about Akhmedov to her colleagues at all. I just wanted to remind the employees of the maternity hospital that their duties must be performed efficiently.

“Since 2014, there have been three deaths of newborns. This is my pain, we had three children who died. I told the doctors about this. They perfectly understood what it was about. side of the prosecution. The first was a 900-gram baby, he died on the third day. There, just like with Akhmedov, there was poor-quality medical care,” Belaya said.

In the last word, the doctor even tried to explain the terrible phrase: “Say, he died during transportation!”: “As for the phrase“ Say, died during transportation. ”There was a child who died during transportation. He died in the perinatal center. Death was provoked by a temperature drop in an ambulance. Therefore, at the meeting, I remembered that case,” Belaya said.

The mother of the deceased baby also got it. The doctor decided to blame the woman who lost the child in an attempt to justify herself for the suggestion that the woman in labor was not interested in the baby that got on the audio recording.

“As for the phrase “a woman is not interested in him,” I even said during the investigation that, in my opinion, there could be a criminal component. Mother waited 54 hours (from the moment the contractions began – “MK”), did not apply to a medical organization. Apparently, she wanted to arrange a home birth, “Belaya made her belated diagnosis.

The speech of Elina Sushkevich, the resuscitator of the local perinatal center, who came to the maternity hospital to pick up the newborn Akhmedov, but instead injected him with a lethal dose of magnesia, turned out to be the exact opposite of the cold restraint of Elena Belaya in the heat of emotions. For her last speech, Sushkevich adopted the thesis “I’m not ashamed.”

“I am not ashamed to look into the eyes of you, your honor, to you, dear prosecutor. I am not ashamed to look into the eyes of my colleagues and teachers who taught me to save, nurse. I am not ashamed to look into the eyes of my mother, who raised me alone. She knows that she raised a doctor, but not a murderer,” Sushkevich said in a trembling voice and added that all the children who died during the years of her practice remained for her “little embers in her heart.”

It is curious that even at the very end of the trial, the defendants, albeit not so obviously, tried to drown each other. Elena Belaya believes that the baby had no chance of surviving. Not in the maternity hospital, but in the reanimobile or in the ward of the perinatal center – he would still not be a tenant. Elina Sushkevich believes that if the doctors of the fourth maternity hospital had been quicker, the baby could have survived: “I never said that the child had no chance. There was. But I was called too late. And for such children, every second counts,” she said the resuscitator and finally threw a verbal accusation of cynicism at the judge and the prosecutor. They say that it is cynical to blame a doctor for the murder of a patient, and even more so to compare doctors of the 21st century with doctors of German concentration camps.

2.5 hours after the final speeches of the defendants, Judge Andrey Vyunov announced the verdict. In it, he restored the chronology of events that led to the death of the baby.

So, on November 6, 2018, at a morning meeting, Elena Belaya learns that a deeply premature boy weighing only 700 grams was born in the maternity hospital at 4-30 in the morning.

At 7:50 am, a team of resuscitators from the city perinatal center was called to the maternity hospital.

As established by the court, already at this time, and.about. the head physician realized that such a baby could put an end to her career ambitions:

“White understood that (in a child – “MK”) there is a high probability of death, which will worsen the indicators of medical statistics. This will negatively affect her chances of getting the position of head physician,” the judge read out.

At about 8:15 a team of resuscitators arrived at the maternity hospital with Elina Sushkevich. Belaya persuaded her to kill the child by injecting him with magnesium sulfate “to artificially create a positive picture of the work of the maternity hospital.”

In the intensive care unit, Sushkevich took 10 ml of magnesia into a syringe – a full ampoule. This many times exceeded the maximum allowable rate for newborns. The doctor administered the medicine to the baby through an umbilical catheter, which caused acute poisoning.

A few minutes later the child died.

All this time, Elena Belaya held the door to the ward so that no one would enter the room.

“Under the threat of dismissal, Belaya forced other doctors to correct the entry in the journals where the child was recorded as a live birth,” the verdict says.

The court rejected all theses of the defendants about innocence. Elena Belaya was found guilty of organizing the murder of a newborn. Elina Sushkevich – in the execution of a crime.

Belaya was sentenced to 9 years and 6 months in prison. Sushkevich – by the age of 9. Both women will serve their sentences in a penal colony. In addition, they were sentenced to a restriction of freedom for a year and a half and a ban on medical activity for a period of 3 years.

The defense plans to appeal the verdict. Elina Sushkevich’s lawyer, Kamil Babasov, said that no one killed the child: he died of diseases. The defender insists on the innocence of his client.

“This child is one of the thousands that Elina saved. We studied the statistics. She did not worsen, did not improve. She did not change at all. Elina had no reason to commit this crime. She did not inject the child with any substance. You can take tests: everyone there will be magnesium in the blood. Everyone has it,” the lawyer commented on the results of the process in an interview with reporters. In addition, the lawyer stressed that the baby was born at 23 weeks.

“Saving such children is a miracle. They have a low survival rate. So the circumstances developed, Elina was called after four hours. The mother was not observed, she did not even have an exchange card. After her water broke, two and a half days passed. She called an ambulance when her stomach ached. That’s how the circumstances developed, “Babasov believes.

The only bright spot in this dark story is that Zamira Akhmedova, the mother of a murdered baby, recently had a baby. As the representative of the victim Larisa Guseva said, the baby is now breastfed. Therefore, his mother could not come to the announcement of the verdict. But Akhmedova is completely satisfied with the result of the process. It doesn’t matter to her what punishment the court would have given the doctors. For a woman, the main thing is that they were finally found guilty.