Venice, hepatitis due to transfusion: after 50 years relatives compensated with 600 thousand euros
Fifty years ago, after a transfusion in the hospital, received a diagnosis that would change her life: hepatitis. It then degenerated into cirrhosis of the liver and then into hepatocellular carcinoma, who killed her fourteen years ago. Now, after half a centurya sentence of the Court of Appeal of Venice modifies what was established two years ago in Cassation And sets compensation of almost 600,000 euros for the woman’s relativesmoney which come from the coffers of the Municipality of Venice. It matters littleindeed, that more than forty years have passed since the health management passed to the Regionsat the material time the lagoon hospital was the responsibility of Ca’ Farsetti and therefore today it is up to the city government to repay husband, sister, children and grandchildren of the loss. As well as settling the legal costs – almost another fifty thousand euros -, lining up all levels of judgement.
Childbirth and transfusion in ’72
It all starts in 1972
when the woman is admitted to civilian hospitals gathered to give birth: requests require a transfusion and the bag it receives is infected. But she won’t find out until three years later, when she’s diagnosed with hepatitis, though at the time there was no confirmation of the gap between the blood received in the hospital and the disease. Arrived only in 1992after a series of specific reports. The lady will die in 2009, struck down by liver cancer at the age of sixtyand at that point the battle begins lawyer of the family, assisted by the lawyer Enrico Cornelio. And there really was a battle: the first and second levels of judgement, in fact, had indeed confirmed the responsibility of the Municipality, but they had also placed the prescription on the sentence, given the many years that had passed. Here then, together with the family lawyer’s appeals, the expert reports were also needed to clarify how the woman knew for sure the origin of her illness only long after contracting it. At this point the compensation, initially proposed at 25,000 euros each, increased, given that not only the damage for the woman’s death was calculated, but also the damage experienced for the forty years of illness. 23,740 euros will therefore go to the sister, 559,417 to the other family members, to be divided equally among all of them.
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January 14, 2023 (change January 14, 2023 | 1:07 pm)
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