Patients at a public hospital in Surgut, Russia, say doctors performed abortions and other gynecological surgeries on them without anesthesia — ignoring their pain and mocking their suffering. The hospital’s chief physician has denied the allegations. The regional health department says it’s launched an investigation, though it claims no official complaints have been filed. Meduza summarizes what we know about the allegations so far.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30806932

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One of the patients said she was admitted to the hospital for an abortion at seven weeks of pregnancy. She was told she would receive local anesthesia, but the medication failed to take effect. Though she immediately informed the doctor, obstetrics and gynecology specialist Mikhail Kurnosikov — who also serves as the hospital’s chief physician — that she was in “searing, unbearable pain,” he ignored her agony and continued the procedure, she said.

“He told me, ‘That’s what you deserve. Next time, you’ll know better than to get an abortion,’” she recalled. “I was in shock from the pain for a full hour afterward.”

The other woman told Dozhd that she was admitted to the same hospital in 2018 for a gynecological surgery. “Normally, they administer anesthesia and wait for it to take effect. In my case, everything happened very quickly. But when it started, I thought I was going to black out from the pain,” she said. The woman said she only realized she hadn’t been given any local anesthesia after she was later readmitted. “I went through the entire procedure fully conscious, feeling everything,” she said.

When Dozhd reached Kurnosikov for comment, the doctor first asked the reporter where she was calling from. Upon hearing she was in the Netherlands, he refused to discuss the allegations. “We don’t talk to Nazi subjects,” he said.

Speaking to the Russian news outlet Podyom, Kurnosikov denied any wrongdoing. “Everything was done in strict accordance with the law,” he said, dismissing the allegations as harassment. “This is a smear campaign. It’s just foreign agents writing this. It’s a targeted attack from abroad.”

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