MAJMAA, 2 September — The Health Ministry has sent a team comprising three doctors to King Khaled Hospital in Majmaa, 180 km north of Riyadh, to investigate the circumstances that led to the death of a patient admitted there. Relatives of the patient lodged a complaint alleging that the man died due to negligence of doctors.
The ministry has barred four of the hospital’s doctors involved in the case from leaving the country before the investigations are completed. The four doctors included two Egyptians — a pediatrician and an internist — and two Indians — an ENT specialist and an anesthetist.
The probe panel has interviewed the relatives of the dead to take evidence.
The Saudi patient was transferred from a primary health center to King Khaled Hospital with acute respiratory problems.
According to the relatives, the man died because the doctors failed to take quick action to revive his respiratory system.
In their complaint to the hospital director, the relatives charged that the delay in providing proper care caused the patient’s death. “While the patient was waiting in the emergency ward for more than one and a half hours, two doctors — the internist and the pediatrician — were caught in an argument,” the relatives said.
The hospital had cut two days’ salaries of the ENT specialist and the anesthetist as punishment after an earlier investigation. But the relatives insisted that the internist and the pediatrician were also responsible.
