Lagos — A Spanish forensic scientist has declared that the death of former President Olusegun Obasanjo's wife, Stella, was avoidable with suitable treatment administered during the fateful liposuction.

He was addressing a Spanish court conducting a trial on the death of the first lady in the country in 2005.

The police physician pointed out that the patient had perforations in her liver and abdomen.

According to him, the quantity of liquids administered on her after an intervention was "insufficient", adding that she also had symptoms of a shock.

The expert indicated that the evidence of shock could have been detected "hours earlier" and with a blood test and an ultrasound scan it would have been possible for the doctor to detect the symptoms of a shock.

He said the doctor could have detected the complications approximately 10 hours before her death.

His opinion was shared by the forensic scientist brought in to serve as an expert witness.

On the contrary, four other experts told the court a blood test could not have contributed much and insisted that the symptoms were habitual and that the progression was "normal" until the night of the day before the death.

Nevertheless, one of the experts recognised that "a transfer at this hour could have led to an improvement of the patient's health".

He pointed out that the blood loss (half a litre) does not produce a haemorrhagic shock.

One of the doctors who attended to the patient, said while being moved to another clinic, he discovered that the woman became unconscious, had no pulse and at this moment the accused and he tried to revive her and "I observed a blinking".

The district attorney maintained his initial accusation of a crime of imprudent murder, for which it requests the accused who is a specialist in plastic and aesthetic surgery to be imprisoned for two years and given five years disqualification for the death of the wife of former president who was in Molding Clinic in Marbella for abdomen reduction on October 20, 2005.

For the public prosecutor, the accused committed "a heap of negligence", since "it was not diagnosed appropriately".

The transfer of the patient to another hospital was done late. This indicated that although he did not have the intention of causing the incisions in the vital organs neither did he wish her to become "unconscious", this does not suppose that there is minor gravity in the facts.

He said that the accused took "decisions completely opposite to those that he would have taken and, there was lack of follow up".

According to him, the accused displayed lack of analytical strength, apathy and lack of interest for the patient.

The defender asked for the acquittal of the accused and emphasised the declarations of the doctor's co-workers in the clinic who said they made sure some intervention took place in a normal way.

The doctor maintained that in spite of the age of the woman (59) and some occasional asthma, the risk for this type of interventions was catalogued as "I set sail".

Also, it indicated that the operation, which lasted three hours, developed "just as others that it had done until this baneful day and those that I have done later".

On July 10, the state criminal prosecution case against a plastic surgeon from the Molding Clinic in Marbella started. He is charged with the 2005 death of Mrs Obasanjo, after a liposuction surgery he carried out.

At the court, the accused claimed that there was absolutely no evidence of any complications during the procedure nor during the post-op, and described how everything went normally until the early hours of the day after the surgery.