Prosecutor demands maximum sentence for Helga Wauters over Xynthia Hawke’s death in France

An anaesthetist who had been drinking before an emergency caesarean that led to the death of a British woman should serve the maximum three years in jail if convicted and should be banned from working as a doctor, a French prosecutor has demanded.

Helga Wauters is on trial in Pau, south-west France, for the manslaughter of Xynthia Hawke in 2014. She is accused of starving Hawke of oxygen for up to an hour after pushing a ventilation tube into the wrong passageway.

Court told Helga Wauters was drunk when she botched Xynthia Hawke’s caesarean

An alcoholic anaesthetist who botched an emergency caesarean operation that left a young British woman brain dead had been drinking since she woke up that morning, a French court has heard.

Helga Wauters, 51, pushed a breathing tube into 28-year-old Xynthia Hawke’s oesophagus instead of her windpipe and failed to react even when the young woman turned blue, vomited, cried out in pain and went into cardiac arrest.