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The Health and Disability commissioner is investigating the case of a gynaecologist after six women he performed sterilisation operations on became pregnant.
Commissioner Ron Paterson said yesterday he was looking into the role of Whanganui district health Board (DHB), after the resignation of Czech-born gynaecologist Dr Roman Hasil.
Mr Paterson told The Dominion Post that the women who had fallen pregnant despite have undergone surgery deserved to know what happened, and that it wouldn't happen again.
Mr Hasil was employed at Wanganui Hospital from August 2005, but quit on Monday after an inquiry found six out of 32 women who he had performed tube-tying operations on had subsequently become pregnant.
Mr Hasil is understood to have left the country and Mr Paterson said if that was the case there was little point investigating him.
He had worked in Czechoslovakia and Australia before coming to New Zealand, and as a foreign doctor he was supposed to be monitored for 12 months, but concerns have been raised over the DHB's supervision of him.
Dr Hasil performed 32 sterilisations known as "key-hole" surgery, which involved placing metal clips on both fallopian tubes in order to prevent the egg from reaching the womb and being fertilised.
Most of these operations were watched by staff.
A former colleague has said he had planned to write to the Health Commissioner himself, seeking an inquiry into the hospital's handling of Dr Hasil.
DHB board member Clive Solomon said the laparoscopic sterilisation operation Dr Hasil botched was the "easiest operation in the world".
"If he can't do a basic obstetric surgery, what about the decisions he's made in outpatients? For someone who is supposed to be a specialist obstetrician it's like crossing the road."
Dr Solomon himself resigned from his surgical position at the hospital last year on grounds it was "too dangerous" professionally to stay.
The DHB has offered to help the affected women with counselling, and payments for medical treatment.
- NZPA
