CHILD HEALTH
Inquest can proceed without report - coroner
April 3, 2013
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The coroner who will be presiding over the inquest into the death of Savita Halappanavar has said the inquest should be able to proceed on Monday even if the completed HSE report into the incident has not been made public at that stage.
Ms Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, was given the final draft of the report last Friday but has said he is unhappy with aspects of it. His advisers are due to meet the chair of the inquiry, Prof Sabaratnam Arulkumaran.
The HSE has said it will not publish the final version of the report until Mr Halappanavar has been given the opportunity to provide his input to it. The final version may not be published for another two weeks.
Galway West Coroner Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin told irishhealth.com that he did not see why the inquest could not proceed in the absence of the final published report. He said the inquest was a statutory process and each process - the inquest and the HSE probe - was totally independent of the other.
However, he said 'nothing was cast in stone' and everything would be open to legal debate at the inquest.
The inquest held a preliminary hearing in January and will resume on Monday. It is expected to last around eight days and witnesses will include medical and other staff from University Hospital Galway, where Ms Halappanavar died last October.
Dr MacLoughlin said he would have thought that if the HSE inquiry wished to facilitate the inquest it would have ensured that its report would have been finalised before now, but there may have been logical reasons why it had not been completed at this stage. The HSE inquiry got under way last December.
He said the inquest process had commenced before the HSE's internal inquiry had begun.
The inquest will mark the first time that staff who were involved in the care of Ms Halappanavar will be identified. Staff have not been identified in the final draft of the HSE inquiry report.
The inquest will examine the factors that may have contributed to Savita Halappanavar's death.
Under coroner legislation, the purposes of inquests include to establish the facts surrounding a death and to place those facts on the public record. While an inquest may make a general recommendation designed to prevent similar deaths, it does not decide on fault or whether there was a criminal offence.
Savita Halappanavar was admitted to University Hospital Galway on Sunday October 21 last when she was 17 weeks pregnant and was found to be miscarrying.
She died from septicaemia on October 28, having reportedly been refused a termination.
The HSE review reports a single request for a termination of pregnancy being made; however Mr Halappanavar says there were three such requests. The request for a termination was not recorded in the medical notes at the time, according to the report.
Key issues identified in leaks from the inquiry report to date include an apparent overemphasis by the hospital on an unviable foetus and an underemphasis on Ms Halappanavar's seriously deteriorating health, and delays and poor communication in detecting and acting on how seriously ill Savita was when she was admitted to hospital.
Health Minister James Reilly said today he hoped Praveen Halappanavar would contribute to the final report on the circumstances which led to the death of Savita.
The Minister said while he had not yet read the initial report of the HSE review, it would be unacceptable if it transpired that more emphasis had been placed on the unviable foetus, and not enough on Savita's deteriorating condition.
The HSE told irishhealth.com there was no definite timeframe yet for the publication of the final report of its inquiry.
It is speculated, however, that as Mr Halappanavar's input is being sought and as the document has to be brought to Cabinet, it could be another two weeks at least before the report is published.