Staff at a Philippine government hospital are under investigation after a former patient threatened a lawsuit over a YouTube video clip of his rectal surgery, officials said Thursday.
The clip showed hospital staff, including nurses and surgeons, laughing and cheering as a blue canister was removed from the male patient's rectum during the January 3 operation at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Centre in the central city of Cebu.Staff present during the procedure could be suspended or have their licences revoked if found culpable, hospital authorities said.
"There will be sanctions for sure," hospital spokesman Emmanuel Gines told GMA television in an interview, adding that the in-house inquiry would be completed shortly.
The unnamed patient told the station that he and his family suffered humiliation and ridicule when he was identified as the patient of the clip posted to the popular video sharing website YouTube and being passed around by cellphone users.
Gines said it appeared that a larger than usual number of people were in the operating room at the time and many of them taped the surgical procedure using their cellphones or other video recording devices.
A portion of the video aired by GMA showed medical staff giggling while filming the procedure with their mobile phones. It was not clear who posted the video to YouTube, and it has since been removed from the site.
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When contacted by AFP, hospital staff said Gines could not come to the phone to discuss the case.
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