Savita friend backs husband's claim

A friend of Savita Halappanavar has backed up claims that the young dentist was told abortion was not an option because of Catholic teaching.

Mrudula Vasealli told an inquest into the 31-year-old’s death that a senior midwife remarked to the suffering woman that termination could not be used as a treatment for the miscarriage in an Irish hospital.

“She said, the midwife, ’We do not do that here, dear. It’s a Catholic thing’,” she said.

The remark is the second allegation facing a member of the medical team in the obstetrics unit at University Hospital Galway but it differs from husband Praveen Halappanavar’s claim that consultant Katherine Astbury made a similar statement.

The second day at the coroner’s court in the Galway courthouse heard how grief hit the widower in the minutes after his wife’s death.

Ms Vasealli and friends were at the hospital when Mr Halappanavar was told that his wife had suffered multi-organ failure and had died from a heart attack.

“Somebody said Praveen collapsed,” she said.

“He was brought to the lobby. He was vomiting there. He couldn’t walk. After about half an hour we all went home.”

Ms Vasealli told the coroner’s court that Mrs Halappanavar had first pleaded for her unborn girl’s heartbeat to be stopped when medics revealed that the foetus could not be saved.

Mr Halappanavar yesterday told the inquest that his Hindu wife asked for a termination three times before she finally delivered her dead baby daughter four days later.

He also claimed that a doctor had remarked to them that an abortion was not allowed because Ireland is “a Catholic country”.

The inquest heard today how Ms Vasealli spent a day at her friend’s bedside on the Tuesday before her death as Mr Halappanavar drove his parents-in-law to Dublin Airport.

Ms Vasealli said in a statement read to the court: “Savita was very upset again because the foetal heartbeat was still there. She cried, saying ’What kind of mother am I waiting for my own baby to stop it’s heartbeat? I’m losing it, I’m losing it terribly’.”

She told coroner Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin that her friend cried continuously as a midwife checked again for a heartbeat between 11.30am and noon.

“We both, Savita and I, asked if there was a possibility of saving the baby because there was still a heartbeat after three days,” she said.

“Savita said ’Can you please save it. If you can’t do something to stop the foetal heartbeat, I can’t take this waiting for the baby to die’.”

The midwife was identified in lawyers’ “best guess” as clinical midwife manager Ann Maria Burke, according to rosters and a description.

Ms Burke has already given a statement to the coroner which makes no reference to the allegation but she has been called to answer the claim at the inquest tomorrow.

Dr MacLoughlin also requested two other witnesses after he read University Hospital Galway’s policy on the management of sepsis, prepared by the management team of the obstetrics department and agreed in July last year.

Ms Vasealli said she last spoke to her friend that night on the telephone and told her to come home so they could have fun.

Despite the harrowing circumstances of Mrs Halappanavar’s death, Ms Vasealli bore no resentment to staff at the hospital, saying: “The nurses were lovely, They took good care of her. It’s the system that was wrong.”

Mrs Halappanavar carried the baby until the Wednesday but by that night she was in critical condition in intensive care, where she died the following Sunday from septicaemia.

Earlier family friend Dr Rupanjali Kundu, a senior house officer in obstetrics at the hospital, said she had visited Mrs Halappanavar on the Monday and Wednesday when she noticed a significant change in her health.

“She was lying on the bed and she was unable to speak that much,” she said.

“She looked really ill. It was a significant change.”