MAKKAH: Health officials received Tuesday a Civil Defense report about a recent power cut at a Makkah hospital that may have caused the death of a woman while being treated in the surgery department. The family believes that King Faisal Hospital in Al-Shisha is responsible because the power cut made it impossible for the medical team to resuscitate the 60-year-old woman. The hospital management , however, declined to comment on the accusation of negligence, but it stressed that the emergency generator was started immediately after the power failure. The committee responsible for probing medical errors at the Health Affairs Directorate in Makkah is yet to study the report before determining the cause of the 60-year-old woman's death. Col. Ali Al-Mentashri, head of the Investigation Department and spokesman of the Civil Defense in Makkah, said his department acted immediately after learning about the power cut at the hospital. Rescue teams and trucks with generators were immediately dispatched to the site. The teams contained the site and restored power in 30 minutes, he said, adding that no patients needed to be evacuated. “We gave the committee our report on the woman's death,” he said. “The committee is the one that can decide the cause of the death, whether it was caused by the power failure or another reason.” Khaled Salah Al-Johani, one of the woman's relatives, said the hospital was responsible for her death because the staff failed to treat her properly and operate the emergency generator in a timely manner. “The lady was admitted to the hospital three days before her death because she was suffering from pain in her shoulders,” he said. Al-Johani said the doctors couldn't follow up her case because equipment stopped functioning when the power failed. Dr. Ahmad Al-Kharoubi, director of King Faisal Hospital, said emergency generators were switched on immediately after the power cut and covered the facility's vital areas. He stressed that the power failure did not pose any threat to patients. It is premature to determine the cause of the death before the committee completes its investigations, he said. Before the power failure, the woman had suffered heart stroke and she should have been moved to the intensive care unit, but this did not happen, he said. A team of consultants from the internal medicine and emergency departments tried to resuscitate her but she breathed her last.
