Sofia maternity hospital staffers punished for baby switch

Three staff members of Sofia's Sheinovo maternity hospital have been punished for a 2022 baby switch. That was announced by hospital director Rumen Velev during a news conference Tuesday, a day after the medical supervision authorities announced the conclusions of their probe saying that the baby switch was the result of multiple violations of the rules and poor supervision at several levels in the hospital.

The hospital director said, however, that the punishments predated the release of the report by the medical supervision authorities.

The three punished staffers are the head midwife at the neonatology ward, the doctor on duty at the time the babies were switched at discharge from the hospital and the head of ward. The head midwife has been demoted.

The medical supervision authorities said that in the wake of their report at least four Sheinovo medics face administrative punishments and fines.

The scandal with the switched Sheinovo babies surfaced in late December but it immediately transpired that the matter had been investigated for quite some time before that. The babies were switched at birth and that was established as one of the mothers took a DNA test and it showed that she was unrelated to the newborn.