AL-JOUF: A Saudi father has demanded local health officials transfer his five-year-old son to a hospital in Riyadh for treatment after he said a medical mistake in Al-Jouf hospital sent the boy into a
coma.
Owaied Al-Ruwaili took his son Fahd to Suwaier Hospital in Jouf on Nov. 25 because the boy was suffering a high fever.
“The hospital told me that I have the choice of admitting my son to the hospital or giving him injections and go home,” said Ruwaili.
The father chose the injections and took his son home, but the following day the boy’s condition worsened and was admitted to hospital. After the boy was given three antibiotic injections he fell into a coma late Thursday.
“I was speaking to his mother in the phone because she was with him while I was away from the hospital. She was telling me before he was given the third injection that he was fine and then I heard my son screaming then the line was cut off,” said Ruwaili.
The boy was then transferred from Suwaier Hospital in Jouf to a hospital in nearby Sakaka; the name of that hospital was not provided.
Suwaier Hospital officials said there is in investigation underway to determine the caused of the boy’s condition.
“If I knew that my won will end up like this, I would have not taken him to the hospital,” said Ruwaili. “I am trying hard to find a way to transfer my son to a hospital in Riyadh but until now I have not been successful.”
Last year a boy in the same province lost both arms after playing with irrigation equipment. The seven-year-old boy, Muhammad Al-Sharari, was rushed from a rural health center on Jouf province to Prince Abdul Rahman Al-Sudairy Central Hospital in the provincial capitol of Sakaka with the arms on ice; however there was no specialist there who could attempt to re-attach the limbs.
According to a doctor at the hospital in Sakaka at the time, the closest specialist in limb re-attachment was located in Arar, in neighboring Northern Border Province. However, due to the bureaucratic hurdles of transferring a specialist from one province to another, the window of opportunity to reattach the limbs came and went. The boy survived.
