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  Butcher of Bega: Who Watches The Doctors? February 17, 2008  Watch part oneWatch part two Reporter: Ross Coulthart Producer: Nick Farrow It sounds like the stuff of nightmares, or a horror story. A woman goes into her local hospital for routine minor surgery to remove a tiny lesion on her labia. But just before the anaesthetic is administered, her doctor leans over her - out of earshot of the operating theatre staff. “I’m going to take your clitoris too,” he whispers. When she wakes… Pain... agonising pain. To her horror, all her external genitalia – labia and clitoris – have been cut out of her body. For two years Bega Valley woman Carolyn was too traumatised to complain or do anything about the doctor who mutilated her – Graeme Reeves. What she did not know was that she was not the only victim. Then in 2004, she was shocked to read in her local paper that the once respected specialist, practising as a gynaecologist and obstetrician, had been struck off by the NSW Medical Board for gross misconduct. Somehow he had been able to lie his way into the job in Bega, failing to reveal strict conditions under which his right to practice was limited. No one in authority had checked. Carolyn began investigating Reeves, only to find a cluster of other local women who have also suffered at his hands. One woman lost a kidney after he botched her surgery. Others have suffered humiliating and embarrassing physical and mental injuries, destroying their sex lives and leaving them permanently scarred. Yet as SUNDAY reveals this week, because Reeves was deregistered in 2004, neither the NSW Medical Board nor the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission are investigating these new allegations brought to light by Carolyn’s investigations. No health watchdog it seems either can, or will, probe into what happened when Dr Reeves came to Bega from the big city – where he was already under a cloud. As Carolyn dug deeper, she discovered Reeves’ incompetence had killed at least one patient 12 years ago in a Sydney hospital. He had refused to give antibiotics to a mother suffering a post-natal infection, despite the pleas of nursing staff. But for a few dollars worth of antibiotics, a mother of three had died – a completely avoidable death. It became obvious that concerns had been raised about Reeves’ erratic and dysfunctional behaviour with staff and patients for years. In the last year the appalling case of Dr Jayant Patel in Queensland and the litany of complaints about failures in NSW’s hospital system has led to escalating calls for a full and open inquiry into Australia’s health system. Lorraine Long, the head of the independent health watchdog the Medical Error Action Group [MEAG] says there must be an investigation into Reeves because the real problem in the health system is not with impaired or incompetent doctors like him, but with the system that allowed him to continue to practice. She believes it is now vital for Governments to require mandatory reporting of incompetent doctor and that the current system of trust and self-reporting is woefully inadequate. If you have information on a dodgy doctor whom you would like investigated or if you would like help from Lorraine Long’s Medical Error Action Group then go to their new website at: www.medicalerroraustralia.com |
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