After almost twenty years, the final word has been drawn on the legal case concerning Edoardo Bombara, a newborn who died two days after being born at the Messina Polyclinic on 20 December 2005. 16 people were under investigation, including doctors and nurses. A doctor was sentenced to pay almost one million euros for the child’s death.
The father’s complaint
Little Edoardo Bombara died two days after birth, while his twin Cristiano was still intubated and in danger of dying, consequences of the complications that emerged after their caesarean section. The father, Giovanni Bombara, had reported a series of structural deficiencies in the hospital. In particular, according to what was reported, the temperature in the clinic was too cold for newborn children and even the cots were not heated properly.
A 20 year long case
A case that has continued for years with different outcomes in the criminal justice courts for the doctors involved, and which now sees a conclusion on a civil level. The final verdict is from the second civil section of the Messina appeal court presided over by judge Sebastiano Neri and composed of colleagues Antonino Zappalà and Maria Grazia Lau, with the latter also being the drafter of the provision. One of the doctors involved in the criminal trial at the time was sentenced to compensate the parents of little Edoardo. The amounts established amount to hundreds of thousands of euros and overall reach close to one million.
The case of Buccheri La Ferla
A similar case occurred a few months in Palermo, where a newborn baby died in the thirty-eighth week of his mother’s pregnancy after an emergency caesarean section at the Buccheri La Ferla hospital on November 5th. The family filed a complaint with the police at the Scalo station which led the Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation which currently has no suspects.
