Kaliningrad Children’s Rights Commissioner says death of 2-year-old girl is ‘natural selection’
Tatiana Baturina, the Children’s Rights Commissioner for the Kaliningrad Region, said at a regional parliament session that “natural selection” can explain why a local 2-year-old girl recently passed away. “For two-and-a-half years, doctors tried to save her," Baturina explained. "They were battling against natural selection.”
Local parliament member Igor Rudnikov is demanding Baturina’s resignation. Baturina, meanwhile, has apologized to the deceased girl's family, saying she misspoke. “I was talking about the fact that doctors fought for her life from the second she was born,” Baturina clarified.
In the same speech before parliament, Baturina also reported that a criminal case regarding four child deaths at a local hospital has been closed. The local Kaliningrad Investigative Committee denied this and said the case is ongoing.
“I’m surprised how she even made it to two-and-a-half years. Her heart would stop several times a year,” Baturina said.
- Police launched a criminal investigation into the deaths of four children in a local hospital in the town of Sovetsk (in the Kaliningrad region) following a petition by local residents in March 2015 that registered complaints against the facility's doctors.
- The petition states that the hospital has no medical supplies or medicine. “When a child was lying there in convulsions, Dr. Alexandra Serdyuk simply said, ‘It’s all God’s will,’ and went home,” the petition claims.
- On June 11, the local Kaliningrad Investigative Committee reported that two of the four deaths in question were avoidable, had medical aid been granted “in a timely fashion, in the right way."
- The mother of the 2-year-old girl who recently passed away has repeatedly appeals to reporters about her daughter's mistreatment at the hospital. Baturina commented on this by saying “no one should believe news reports that call doctors murderers.”