‘I think Savita would want me to take this case’

He gets abusive mail in his post and meditates. He suffers sleepless nights and goes running. He aches in his heart for his lost wife and fills the place she held there with memories.

The extraordinary strength and calm of Praveen Halappanavar was humbling to hear yesterday as he gave his first interview since the publication of the HSE report into the death of his pregnant wife Savita at Galway University Hospital.

They are also the characteristics that will make him a formidable opponent when he takes his case for negligence to the High Court and his demand for a public inquiry to the European Court of Human Rights.

The 33-year-old widower told Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio he was pursuing both actions, not for money or revenge, but for truth, for women like Savita and for Savita herself who would want him to make things right.

“I get all the strength from her. I think Savita would want me to take this case. She was that kind of person, who always had a million dollar smile, she always wanted good things to happen to everyone around her so we don’t want anyone to suffer like her.”

Not everyone accepts his intentions. He revealed he has received abusive mail from anti-abortion campaigners who have accused him of allowing Savita to be used to push the abortion agenda.

“One particular campaigner who keeps writing again and again, basically I was told to leave the country,” he said. “I was told to mind my own business.”

“I have never been for abortion. I never participated in the abortion debate. The whole family just wants that no woman goes through the pain that Savita had to go through and no family has to go through the circumstances we had to face.”

Dentist Savita, 31, died last October after her miscarriage was mishandled and she developed fatal sepsis. The Indian-born couple’s personal tragedy became a national and international affair after it emerged medics at the hospital had concerns over when they could legally intervene to remove her dying foetus which had no chance of survival without falling foul of the abortion laws.

Despite three inquiries into her death, Praveen said he still feared what happened to Savita could happen to another woman. He said the HSE report published last month was a “whitewash”, the inquest last April was more illuminating but could not apportion blame and the ongoing HIQA probe would only examine the hospital facility and its operational capacity, leaving many questions unanswered.

He was visiting family in India when the HSE report came out, an email the previous night being the only prior notice he got of its publication. And yet he said he still had faith in the forces of law and right that they would eventually bring out the truth.

Just as he still had faith in Ireland and its people — the amazing friends, the supportive strangers, the understanding colleagues at work at Boston Scientific which has become a refuge from his sorrows. Just as he still had faith in God and his belief that he would see Savita again in the afterlife.

He displayed no anger or bitterness, readily acknowledging the letters from staff at Galway University Hospital and the devastation they felt at failing the young woman placed in their care. “It’s not easy for them as well,” he said.

But beneath the soft voice that was at times little more than a whisper roared a steely determination. Health Minister James Reilly will no doubt hear it when he meets Praveen next week and the High Court and European Court of Human Rights can expect to witness it too.

Won’t it be tough to take on those cases after all he has already endured, Miriam wanted to know. Praveen agreed it would be, just as every day since Savita’s death was.

But he is tough too.

“I am very determined and focused,” he said.