Woman's Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Accuses Northwestern Memorial Hospital of Inadequate Malaria Treatment
A woman who says that doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital failed to aggressively treat her malaria is suing the Illinois hospital for Chicago medical malpractice. Dawn Dubsky is now an amputee. She says that doctors at another hospital saved her life but they were forced to amputate her legs and arms.
Dubsky contracted malaria after a mosquito bit her in 2008 while she was in the West Africa Republic of Ghana. After returning to Chicago, Dubsky went to the emergency room at Northwestern after she began to experience severe fatigue and suffer serious headaches.
A doctor there prescribed quinine sulfate tablets, which is a standard treatment for malaria, but the then-32-year-old’s medical condition grew worse. Dubsky’s blood pressure dropped and she developed jaundice on her skin. She also appeared to be suffering from the beginning stages of disseminated intravascular coagulation, her kidneys showed signs of failure, and there were indications that she was about to go into septic shock.
Doctors at Northwestern were able to stabilize Dubsky's condition. She was transferred to University of Chicago Medical Center, and the doctors there amputated her lower legs and arms in order to save her life. Dubsky’s family says that she was devastated when she found out what had happened to her. She later suffered health complications.
Dubksy’s Cook County medical malpractice lawyer says that doctors at Northwestern made a medical mistake when, despite the evidence, they treated her client’s serious condition as if it were “simple, non-complicated malaria.”
Malaria
1 million people in the developing world die from malaria every year, and although it has been over 50 years since the disease was eliminated from the US, people can still bring it home with them after traveling abroad. It is important that doctors not only diagnose the kind of malaria the patient is suffering from but that they administer the proper care in a timely manner. Otherwise, the health consequences for some malaria patients can be catastrophic.
Some of the Symptoms of Malaria:
• Fever
• Vomiting
• Nausea
• Chills
• Diarrhea
• Jaundice
• Anemia
Woman suing hospital for malaria treatment, UPI, February 4, 2010
Fight against malaria: Battle of life and death, Chicago Tribune, November 26, 2009
Related Web Resources:
Malaria, CDC
