A Brazilian doctor has been charged with murdering seven patients in order to provide more available space in a Brazilian hospital's intensive care unit. Dr. Virginia Soares de Souza allegedly administered muscle relaxants to the subjects to make them less coherent. De Souza then purportedly cut their supply of oxygen, and they later unknowingly died of asphyxiation.
The Brazilian doctor charged in the acts is a physician at Evangelical Hospital in Curitiba, about 250 miles southwest of São Paulo. Investigators said they may have found proof that de Souza is responsible for at least 300 other deaths in similar ways, according to Dr. Mario Lobato. The Irish Independent is calling the events "one of the world's worst serial killings." The Brazilian doctor was first arrested last month following suspicious deaths of some of her patients.
Lobato said that in one alleged case, a patient who moments prior had asked for a glass of water was found dead by that very same nurse returning with their drink. The Brazil Health Ministry said that investigators are looking into 1,700 records of patients who died at the hospital, possibly at the hands of the same Brazilian doctor. De Souza's lawyers are claiming that prosecutors in the case misunderstand the inner workings of an intensive care unit.
The Brazilian doctor's case is similar to that of a New Jersey nurse convicted of killing more than 35 people in Pennsylvania as well as his home state. He allegedly murdered a number of his victims through overdoses of intravenous medication in the hospitals he worked at, which stretched from Flemington, N.J., to Allentown, Pa. Cullen is currently serving numerous consecutive life sentences at a prison in Trenton, N.J.
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