A 19-year-old woman in Spain is taking legal action against local health authorities after learning she was swapped at birth with another baby.
Reuters reports the unidentified woman was born in 2002 at the San Millan de Logrono hospital in La Rioja, hours after another baby girl. Both babies were placed in incubators before they were handed to the wrong parents.
The complainant discovered the switch four years ago after a DNA test revealed she was not the child of the woman she believed was her mom, according to the Guardian. A subsequent investigation carried out by the regional health authority concluded there was only one other baby girl she could’ve been swapped with.
The complainant is now seeking $3.5 million in damages from the region’s ministry of health, while the woman she was switched with has been informed but has not yet made a complaint.
“In the case of my client, she was born later but was given to the mother who gave birth to the first child,” attorney Jose Saez Morga told the TVR television network on Tuesday. “This is negligence so gross that it speaks for itself.”
Meanwhile, the health department in the northern region of La Rioja has acknowledged the mistake, maintaining that “human error” was to blame.
“It was a human error and we haven’t been able to find out who was to blame,” Sara Alba, La Rioja’s regional health chief, told reporters on Tuesday. “The systems back then were different and weren’t as computerized as they are now.”
