Riyadh Directorate of Health Affairs has formed a committee of consultants, physicians and personnel from the Legal Department to investigate a case of alleged negligence which resulted in the death of a patient. A complaint was filed at Al-Dirah Police Station and Riyadh Directorate of Health Affairs against two government hospitals in Riyadh. Khalaf Rajeh Al-Shamrani, who filed the complaint, has accused the hospitals of the death of his sister. “An investigation into the allegation will be launched, and we will announce the results as soon as they are available,” Saad Al-Qahtani, the spokesman of Riyadh Directorate of Health Affairs, told Okaz/Saudi Gazette. Al-Shamrani claimed that his 29-year-old sister had hemiplegia and fractures in the back following a traffic accident. She was admitted to the hospital on July 28. Medical examination showed that half of her body was paralyzed and there were fractures in her back. She was later transferred from the ICU to the wards when her condition had stabilized, Al-Shamrani said. The attending doctor said that she would be able to walk on her legs soon, the victim's brother claimed. He said: “All of a sudden, my sister was transferred on Aug. 15 to another hospital, without my permission, under the pretext that she would need a jacket for the back fractures and that the hospital needed to take measurements for her back. A nurse accompanied my sister in the ambulance.” Al-Shamrani said: “My sister fell on the ground while she was being transferred from the ambulance. She went into a coma and her heart stopped. Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation was done and she remained on a ventilator for five hours. “She was transferred from the emergency room to the radiology department, but the radiologist refused to do a test. When my sister died, she was taken to the morgue as a natural death case. No mention of the falling accident was made.” __
