Mother who had three limbs and a hand amputated after abortion complications ‘begged’ doctors for antibiotics

Priscilla Dray lost her limbs after she developed an infection - she is now taking legal action claiming medical negligence

A woman who had three of her limbs and a hand amputated after complications arose from an abortion has warned: "medical errors like this must not happen again."

Priscilla Dray, a mother of three, went into the Pellegrin University Hospital in Bordeaux for an abortion on 22 July 2011. Within two days, she developed a serious infection as she claims doctors refused to give her antibiotics.

The French woman, then 35, developed necrosis a month after her initial visit to the hospital and had both her legs, her right forearm and left hand amputated.

Two doctors appeared at Bordeaux Criminal Court on Tuesday over charges of causing involuntary injuries "through clumsiness, imprudence, inattention, negligence or failure, voluntarily or involuntarily caused incapacity for more than three months”.

The court will determine whether the hospital lacked vigilance and if the doctors were negligent. One practitioner is accused of not prescribing antibiotics during a telephone consultation on 23 July, while the second is accused of delaying examinations, despite worrying blood tests.

Ms Dray says she attended the emergency room the day after her appointment, with a fever of 39.6C and several signs of infection. Her case claims that an intern carried out tests on her and over the phone a doctor decided she did not need antibiotics and she was sent home.

By 24 July, Ms Dray’s symptoms had worsened as her legs felt like “pieces of wood”, she told the court, per France 3. She was sent back to the emergency room after visiting her doctor in Cap Ferret, who sent a letter to the emergency doctors, recommending antibiotics.

It took nearly five hours for Ms Dray to receive antibiotics, as she told the judges: "They didn't believe me, I had to beg. They took me for a bourgeois who was putting on a show.”

She was subsequently transferred to the resuscitation room that night before she entered intensive care days later, as the infection she had contracted progressed and became gangrenous. Her limbs were amputated on August 25 2011.

Ms Dray said on the M6 programme Zone Interdite: "I trusted [them] and this is the state they put me in. I should have died."

The mother has since received a bilateral hand and arm transplant from Penn Medicine.

The Pellegrin University Hospital in Bordeaux has already been ordered to pay Ms Dray 300,000 euros following an administrative court decision in January 2017.