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German Nurse Accused of Poisoning Five Infants With Morphine

The babies, who ranged in age from a day to a month old, started experiencing respiratory difficulties about the same time, leading a hospital to investigate.

The university clinic in Ulm, Germany, where the babies were poisoned. All five of them survived.Credit...Andreas Gebert/Reuters

BERLIN — The staff at a hospital in southwestern Germany was puzzled when five infants sharing the same room all developed breathing trouble at the same time in December. Extra nurses were called in to monitor and gently nudge the babies when their breathing stopped.

Soon, the five — who were between a day and a month old — were taken to the intensive-care unit, where the three gravest cases were put on artificial respiration machines. For weeks, the hospital staff in Ulm, halfway between Stuttgart and Munich, could not figure out what ailed the infants.

Then, after tests raised suspicions, morphine was found in the infants’ urine and the police were called, the authorities found a syringe with a mixture of what was believed to be breast milk and what turned out to be morphine in a nurse’s locker.

On Wednesday, the case spilled into public when the nurse from the neonatal ward at Ulm University Clinic appeared before a judge on suspicion of having deliberately poisoned the five infants.

The nurse, whose identity has not been released, in keeping with German laws, has denied the accusations. Official charges have not yet been brought, but the judge on Wednesday ruled that she could be kept in jail on suspicion of causing grievous bodily injury and five counts of attempted manslaughter.

The case comes a year after a man was convicted of killing 85 patients in hospitals near Oldenburg, a seven-hour drive north of Ulm. Officials believe that he killed as many as 300 patients over five years starting in 2000.

All five babies in Ulm ultimately survived. But Klaus-Michael Debatin, the medical director of the pediatric department at Ulm University Clinic, said at a news conference on Thursday that there was no medical reason before the mysterious illness to give morphine to the infants, some of whom had been born prematurely.

“We have to assume that a crime was committed with criminal energy at our hospital,” Dr. Debatin said.

Morphine is one of the most widely known pain killers, but it has a negative effect on respiration. In extremely young patients, it is used both to control pain and to treat the newborns of drug-addicted mothers.

Initially, university doctors, suspecting an infection behind the infants’ sudden illness, ran a series of test that came back negative. Only then did they test the babies’ urine, thinking, according to one doctor, that a pathogen or agent in a heating or air-condition unit might have caused the infants’ sudden ailment.

In a twist, three of the infants placed in artificial respirators after being struck ill were given morphine as part of the standard treatment, according to doctors. But the tests showed traces of morphine in all of the infants — even the two who had not been prescribed the pain killer.

The fact that all five infants started experiencing respiratory difficulties at roughly the same time led officials to conclude that the five had been poisoned around the same time, most likely during a night shift in late December.

The morphine that is officially prescribed by doctors at the hospital in Ulm is kept locked away, and each use is carefully recorded. Still, the police believe the hospital’s morphine was used to poison the babies. According to hospital doctors, the suspect had access to the morphine storage unit on the ward.

The police were called on Jan. 17, nearly a month after the crime was committed — a delay apparently tied to the hospital staff’s search for a biological infection and the Christmas break. The police eventually interviewed all six people who were on duty during the night shift — two doctors and four nurses — and searched their personal and work areas on hospital grounds.

In the nurse’s changing locker, the police found the feeding syringe with breast milk laced with morphine. The police say they believe the nurse in Ulm gave the babies morphine during their feeding, but the investigation is continuing.

Doctors say there will be no lasting effects on the five babies’ health.

“It is only thanks to the quick and immediate actions of the hospital staff the lives of the five infants could be saved,” Bernard Weber, the head of the Ulm Police, said at the news conference.

As for a motive, Christof Lehr, the district attorney in charge of the case, said, “Our investigation is at the very beginning.”

The university clinic in Ulm employs about 6,000 staff members, with 400 working in the pediatrics and adolescent medicine wing.

Udo X. Kaisers, the hospital’s managing medical director, publicly apologized to the children’s parents and families during the news conference.

“We can all very well understand the parents’ concern for the health of their children,” he said.

Christopher F. Schuetze covers German news, society and occasionally arts from The Times’s Berlin bureau. Before moving to Germany, he lived in the Netherlands, where he covered everything from tulips to sea-level rise. More about Christopher F. Schuetze

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Nurse Accused Of Poisoning Five Infants In Germany. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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