JEDDAH, 20 September 2003 — Abdul Rahman Mahmoud, an AIDS patient who made headlines when he was thrown into the street by a private hospital here, has died.
Mahmoud, 57, died Wednesday night at Jeddah’s King Saud Hospital.
A public outcry erupted last month when local newspapers reported that he had been thrown out by the New Jeddah Clinic Hospital and dumped behind his employer’s offices on Palestine Street, despite the fact that the employer had given the hospital a written undertaking to cover the cost of Mahmoud’s treatment.
Mahmoud, already very sick and unresponsive, was injured on the face and hands when the hospital’s security guards ejected him from the pick-up truck that was used to transport him from the hospital. He lay in the afternoon heat at the mercy of passers-by for several hours before his employers, Rajab and Silsilah, found out about his plight and arranged for him to be taken to King Saud Hospital.
As a result of the widespread media coverage the incident received, the Ministry of Health and the Governorate of the Makkah Region initiated an investigation into the New Jeddah Clinic Hospital’s actions. A source close to the investigation, Dr. Adnan Al-Bar, said in an interview the investigation was just days away from completion and that if the New Jeddah Clinic Hospital was indeed found to be errant, it would face the maximum penalty provided by law.
The body of Mahmoud, an Indonesian national, has been transferred to a morgue at a local health institution because King Saud Hospital, the main AIDS hospital in Jeddah, has no place to safely store the body.
When Arab News visited Mahmoud at King Saud Hospital at the time of the incident, he shared with another AIDS patient a room with small barred windows resembling a jail cell.
According to Okaz newspaper, between June 1997 and June 1998, 349 HIV-positive foreigners were deported from Saudi Arabia. Those deported — who were mainly maids, drivers, and laborers — were discovered to be infected when they took the mandatory HIV test required for work permits.
The estimated rate of adults in the Kingdom infected with HIV/AIDS in 1999 was 0.01percent.
