YANBU: The Health Affairs Department here is currently investigating a possible case of medical negligence involving a young boy who was stung by a scorpion in the town of Muthalath, 120 km away from Yanbu. The family traveled to two clinics and one recently built hospital, none of which could treat the patient.

The family claims the poison spread in the boy’s body as they desperately searched the region for a doctor. The boy, identified only as Marwan, was reportedly still unconscious in the ICU of Yanbu General Hospital on life support.

“They could not find doctors at the health centers or the hospitals to which he was taken,” said Marwan’s uncle, Salama Al-Juhani.

The uncle said that the boy’s father took him to a temporary clinic in Faqali, where there is a camp for evacuees of recent tremors near Al-Ais. However, there was no doctor in attendance.

“We found only a nurse,” said the uncle. “The doctor failed to show up though he was called by telephone.”

He said the boy was taken to another clinic in the same area but the staff did not have sufficient supplies even to start an IV drip, the uncle told Arab News.

A Red Crescent ambulance driver volunteered to take the boy to a recently constructed hospital of Yanbu Al-Nakheel, considered by health officials to be the most advanced and well-equipped hospital in the region.

“There were no doctors in this new hospital,” said the uncle. “We only found nurses and an ambulance without a driver,” he said.

Yanbu Health Affairs Director Dr. Abdul Rahman ibn Abdullah Saeedi contradicted Al-Juhani’s claims and said it was the staff at Yanbu Al-Nakheel that ordered and facilitated the transfer to Yanbu General Hospital. “Because of the speed factor, the boy was transported by the ambulance of the Red Crescent so as not to waste time waiting for the ambulance of the hospital to be prepared,” he said.

However, Al-Juhani insists it was the ambulance driver who had volunteered to take the boy to Yanbu Al-Nakheel who then offered further transit to Yanbu General Hospital, violating rules that he not drives more than 40 km from his station. “When we were near the general hospital, the boy stopped breathing so they put him on life support,” said Al-Juhani.

The uncle said they were now waiting to shift their boy to another hospital in the region where he could be treated.

“No reply has come from any of the hospitals we have approached though there were standing government instructions that when beds were not available in the general hospitals the cases could be referred to private hospitals at the expense of the government,” he said. Saeedi said the Health Directorate has promised to investigate the case.

Currently the boy’s condition is such that he cannot be moved until the treatment for the poison takes effect and the patient’s condition stabilizes.

“We cannot at present afford to take him anywhere,” he said.