Heart case father hits at health chief

James Shadbolt says comments made by Auckland District Health Board chairman Wayne Brown are insensitive. Picture / Dean Purcell

A man whose baby son's heart was "stolen" by Green Lane Hospital is incensed by this being compared with hip-replacement operations.

"It's insensitive," James Shadbolt said yesterday.

Eighty-three families are suing the Crown and its agency responsible for the liabilities of district health boards' predecessors for $4.47 million over the hospital's retention of hearts without their consent.

In yesterday's Herald, Auckland District Health Board chairman Wayne Brown urged them to reconsider, saying that if they succeeded they would be depriving Aucklanders of surgery. The $90,000 each plaintiff was seeking would pay for seven hip operations.

Mr Shadbolt said this was a ridiculous comparison because of the emotional hurt that the retention of his son Samuel's heart and part of his lungs had inflicted.

"From the time that we were told that they did have his organs, my marriage started to split apart. That was as a direct result of the stress, I believe," said Mr Shadbolt, a 40-year-old Pukekohe engineer-welder.

Samuel was operated on for heart problems at Green Lane soon after he was born at Middlemore Hospital in 1990. He died aged 12 days.

Mr Shadbolt said he did not know the hospital had taken or kept the organs until it revealed in 2002 that it had a teaching collection of over 1300 organs, mainly children's hearts.

He asked the hospital if Samuel was involved, but because his wife had not dealt with his death nearly 11 years earlier, he requested that when replying, officials not contact his wife first. Despite this, she was the first to be contacted.

Mr Shadbolt, who is not part of the legal action "at the moment", said that despite apologising and paying the $85 to bury Samuel's organs with him, the hospital had not done enough to put right the harm it had caused.

A board spokeswoman said a board official was available to respond to Mr Shadbolt's concerns.

One plaintiff, Dawn Bailey, the Wellington mother whose inquiries about her deceased baby Ashleigh's heart led to the Green Lane revelations, said Mr Brown's assertion was incorrect and any damages awarded would come from a hospitals-liability fund not related to health funding.