Doctors in the UK failed to conduct a pregnancy test before giving Sarah Sharma a powerful anti-acne drug and the drug ultimately caused enough damage to her unborn baby that Sharma felt compelled to have an abortion.
As the London Daily Mail reports, Sharma was prescribed Roccutane at Peterborough City Hospital and the drug caused the baby to develop severe heart and nervous system abnormalities that were so severe her physicians warned her the child would not survive after birth. As a result, Sharm had an abortion at 21 weeks of pregnancy.
The report indicates physicians “failed to follow simple guidelines which state she should have been on the pill for at least a month before they took a pregnancy test.”
Sharma and her husband already have a four-month-old baby and the couple won damages in court after filing a lawsuit related to the case.
From the story:
Mrs Sharma, from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, who named her unborn girl Indiya, said yesterday: ‘Losing Indiya was devastating but to find out after that her condition, and subsequent death, could have been prevented is almost unbearable.’
Mrs Sharma was referred to a Peterborough hospital dermatologist after suffering for a year from bad acne on her neck and chest.
The condition meant she was unable to wear many of her clothes because she only felt comfortable if her skin was fully covered up.
After trying creams that did not work, she was prescribed isotretinoin. She said: ‘I was told this new drug had great results in the past.
‘At our first consultation meeting we were told it was a strong drug and there were some side effects. I was told that it could be dangerous for women who were pregnant and that in men it could cause issues with mental illness.
‘I was given an oral contraceptive pill on the same day I was given the drug and they did a pregnancy test and I was told that it came back negative.
‘About two weeks after I started taking it I became very sick and ill and when I went to my GP he said it was a strong drug and my body was just not agreeing with it.
‘I persevered for another week and I tried to just get on with it because they went to all this trouble to prescribe this drug to me.
‘I then decided enough was enough but then I started suffering with stomach cramps and pains.’
Mrs Sharma did a pregnancy test herself and it came back positive.
She then went for a scan and discovered she was 11 weeks pregnant.
When she went for her 20 week scan she was told that her baby was severely deformed. She lost Indiya a week later.
Mrs Sharma’s salesman husband, Varun, 25, said: ‘We were left with nothing but broken hearts and empty arms.
‘I lost all faith in the NHS the day Indiya was born sleeping.’
