Hospital Ordered to Pay N31M For Mixing Up Babies 27 Years Ago

An Austrian health authority has been ordered to pay €90,000 in damages over the mix-up of two babies almost 30 years ago.

Doris Gruenwald, born in 1990, only found out after a routine blood test when she was 22 she was not biologically related to the couple she thought were her parents.

"My whole body started shaking... It was like the ground under my feet disappeared," she told the Krone daily last year.

The clinic, University Hospital Graz, cast doubt on whether the mix-up happened there, suggesting it may have taken place later and somewhere else.

But the court rejected this, ruling that the mix-up happened in the 20 hours between the birth and the mother, recovering from a caesarean section, being given the child.

Ruling there was "gross negligence", it awarded damages of €30,000 each for Doris and Evelin Gruenwald plus her husband, as well as the costs from the couple adopting her.

Doris Gruenwald still does not know who her biological parents are, while the other victim is unaware that she was brought up by the wrong people.

This is despite the hospital having last year launched a programme offering free DNA tests to the 200 women born in the hospital around the same time and their mothers.

So far, only about 30 women have taken advantage of the tests and no matches have been found.

The local health authority said it planned to appeal against the ruling, saying that the court had failed to establish that the babies were mixed up at the hospital.