German hospital checks 130 deaths

A Berlin hospital said yesterday it was reviewing more than 130 deaths following the arrest of a nurse suspected of having murdered at least two seriously ill patients.

Investigations showed the 54-year-old female nurse gave lethal overdoses of medicine to two patients in intensive care at Berlin's Charite hospital last August and this month, said Berlin's state prosecutor's office in a statement.

One of the patients was 77 years old, the other 62.

"She has confessed to this," said Michael Grunwald, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

The nurse was arrested on Wednesday and the investigating judge has ordered her to be held on suspicion of murder.

The hospital announced it would check further deaths in the 10-year period that the nurse had worked there and it was starting with 130 cases since June 2004.

Gert Baumann, director of the hospital's centre for internal medicine, said the patients in question had suffered from serious heart conditions but their sudden deaths had attracted attention.

"The incident has shocked us all," said the hospital director Behrend Behrends.