TRANI – A chemist and another employee of the Mistral pharmaceutical company agree to a two-year prison sentence, with the benefit of a suspended sentence, and the Irish company compensates 750,000 euros to the family members of Teresa Sunna, the 29-year-old from Trani who was poisoned on 24 March 2012 by nitrite of sodium packaged by mistake in an envelope with the label sorbitol (the harmless sugary substance that is administered for the diagnostic examination of any food intolerances).
The poisoning took place in the surgery of the Barletta gastroenterologist Ruggiero Spinazzola who had purchased the package via the internet, thus saving a handful of euros. In the light of what was reconstructed by the deputy public prosecutor of Trani Michele Ruggiero who coordinated the activity of the Carabinieri del Nas, the error in the packaging occurred in the headquarters - certainly not a model, the investigations revealed - of R&D Laboratories, better known as Mistral.
However to Dr. Spinazzola was contested for the "failure to rigorously verify, in the procurement channel, the effective correspondence of the product received by post from Mistral with that of the accompanying technical data sheet, as well as the failure to ascertain the expiry date of the product, absent on the postal package and on the analysis form, and the imprudent and imperative use of the substance administered without a direct prior re-evaluation, even if only visual/olfactory". The doctor was also accused of "administering spoiled medicines" as expired medicines were found in his office, not isolated but confused with those that could still be administered. Spinazzola did not opt for any alternative rite. The judge for the preliminary hearing of the Court of Trani, Rossella Volpe, has sent him to trial: the trial against him will begin on 26 June.
Teresa Sunna was not the only one to drink sodium nitrite on the morning of 24 March 2012. Thanks to an antidote of a few euros administered in the anti-poison center of the «Dimiccoli» hospital in Barletta, 35-year-old Anna Abbrescia, from Altamura, escaped death the 62-year-old Addolorata Piazzolla, from Margherita di Savoia. The sentence negotiated by the defendants across the Channel also covers the serious injuries of the two women. Mistral paid compensation of 90,000 euros for each of them.
The public prosecutor of Trani Carlo Maria Capristo defined the purchase of sorbitol via the web as "imprudent and rash", which took place from the eBay site by means of a shipper from Barletta cleared of the initial accusations. According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the gastroenterologist should have purchased the sorbitol from institutional channels; basically from a pharmacy and not from the internet.
Tuesday, 18 March 2014 – La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.it
