Saudi Gazette report MADINAH — An obstetrician at the Madinah Maternity Hospital dislocated the hip of a girl during delivery that led to her subsequent death, Al-Madinah daily reported quoting a hospital report on the case. Rimas's father Mohammed Al-Harbi said he was surprised that the medical error was clearly recorded in the death report issued by the hospital after his daughter passed away. He said he was not told about the dislocation of her hip during treatment in the hospital, which had lasted for more than five months. The medical report considered the dislocation of the hip as one of the auxiliary reasons that caused the girl's death, but the main causes were a drop in blood pressure, the stoppage of the heart and the possibility of a virus in the blood. “When my daughter was born, the hospital told me that she had problems breathing, could not suckle normally and had to be put in an incubator,” the father said. He said the hospital also told him that his daughter was born with congenital deformities that will not allow her to suckle normally. “When I asked the hospital to take x-rays of the throat and the esophagus, they told me that they did not have the equipment for that,” he said. Al-Harbi said he sent a report on the case to the governing authorities who agreed to treat his daughter at government expense at King Faisal Specialist Hospital. The KFSH declined to accept his daughter on the grounds that there was a qualified female specialist in the Madinah hospital who could treat his daughter and follow up her case. “Unfortunately the female specialist, Dr. Fatima Al-Fadli, was on her annual vacation at the time,” the father said. The hospital asked him to have the blood samples of his daughter analyzed at an outside laboratory that cost him about SR1,800. “During her entire stay of 150 days, the hospital did not give my daughter any proper treatment other than the normal nursing services,” he said. “During all this time no specialist was called to examine my daughter's digestive functions,” he added. The father said a week after his daughter was discharged from the maternity hospital he took her to King Fahd hospital in Madinah where the doctors discovered the dislocation of the hip during delivery and said she needed a delicate surgical operation under complete anesthesia. “The hospital referred us again to the maternity hospital. While waiting for the appointment with the obstetrician my daughter's condition deteriorated. She was put under the ventilation system where she eventually died,” he lamented. The spokesman for the department of health affairs in Madinah, Abdul Raziq Hafiz, said the case was being investigated and the findings would be announced as soon as the investigations were completed.
