Hungarian police have launched an investigation into 70 suspicious deaths at a Budapest hospital following claims that patients were given lethal drug overdoses.

Police have interviewed doctors and nurses  at the Uzsoki Hospital over deaths which took place between 2005 and 2007. They came to light after a former doctor at the hospital wrote an article for a medical journal in which he alleged that cancer patients had died from overdoses of morphine. The hospital has declined to comment.  

According to a report in the London Telegraph, it is possible that patients were euthanased by giving them overdoses of morphine. Murder could be difficult to prove, as morphine may have been needed to control severe pain, rather than less potent drugs.

Euthanasia in Hungary is illegal. Istvan Eger, president of the Hungarian Hospital Association, said that any proven "misuse of drugs or euthanasia clearly constitutes a violation of ethics, and is a matter with criminal consequences". ~ London Telegraph, Nov 25