The scandal at the mental hospital in Taif is a continuation of many past medical mistakes in the country. In the past, medical mistakes were either blamed on doctors — most of them foreign doctors — or on the patient’s health condition. A committee consisting of representatives from many government departments has been established in order to investigate what happened at the mental hospital.
In many cases, administrative mistakes are responsible for disasters. The mistake is transformed from an individual one into an institutional one. We will not make any decision until the investigation ends but the pictures from the hospital in Taif will besmirch forever the reputation of the Health Ministry which brags constantly about the free services that it provides for citizens and residents.
We had assumed that our hospitals were under the supervision of those in charge at the Health Ministry because the patients in the hospitals are our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. We had also assumed that senior officials in the ministry were at the least aware of the day-to-day routine operations in ministry hospitals.
At the same time, stripping mental patients naked and spraying them with a high-pressure stream of water from a hose connected to a water tanker — and doing this in front of all hospital employees and cleaning staff — is totally unacceptable and goes against everything Islam teaches about human dignity. The incident embarrassed the families of the patients because their relatives had been humiliated in their own country. We bring sick people from abroad to the Kingdom in order to provide them with the most advanced medical care but we fail to do the same for our own. I hope that these allegations will not create a bad image of our country which has opened its hospitals and health centers to all patients — Saudis and non-Saudis.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is sensitive about issues that touch the dignity of people living in this country. He will not tolerate people being humiliated in such insensitive ways. That is why he ordered an immediate probe into the Taif incident. He ordered the formation of a committee to investigate and determine who was responsible and to punish them accordingly.
Those that we saw naked in the pictures are our children and our brothers. Some people believe that the patients are insane and do not realize what is happening to them. Even if that is so, does that mean we should treat them — our fellow human beings — worse than animals? Does the Health Ministry have nothing to say about their treatment?
Patients in developed countries are well taken care of and are rehabilitated so they can rejoin society under the supervision of their hospitals. The main purpose of their stay in the hospital is to receive treatment — not to receive torture.
Normally, the medical mistakes that are reported in newspapers refer to those which result in death or paralysis or coma. These have reached such a disgraceful level that the Health Ministry does not even ask about them. If we want proper treatment, these mistakes must stop. The investigation into the incident in Taif should focus on the planning and supervision departments since they allowed — knowingly or unknowingly — such a thing to happen. In either case, severe punishment is called for.
