While director of health affairs Dr. Saleh Al-Mounis declined to say more than that the investigation committee had taken the case to the Shariah authorities in Asir province, the baby's father revealed that the report of the committee held the obstetrician responsible and accused him of not doing his job properly.
The father, Saleh Abdullah Al-Braiki, said the obstetrician had not performed any ultrasound examination to decide the age of the baby or its position in the uterus. ‘The obstetrician did not allow the mother to deliver naturally. Instead, he pulled the baby until the head was separated from the body,’ he said.
According to the father, the doctor had sewn the head in its place without informing the family of his actions and the cause of death.
The director of health affairs, on his part, denied that the delivery equipment used at the operations room was obsolete and said there were 1,643 deliveries in Sharoura hospital last year. He said only 20 of them died — 12 due to premature birth and the others because of genetic and hereditary factors.
Muhammad Al-Sihaim, former chairman of the general court in Sharoura, said this was not the first case of its kind in the southern city. He said the man who washes the dead informed him that the bodies of a number of dead babies had been found deformed and disfigured.
Lawyer Hassan Jamaan Al-Zahrani said it was proved beyond doubt that the obstetrician did not know the basics of medicine.
"For this very reason, the Ministry of Health represented by the Department of Health Affairs in Sharoura should shoulder the biggest responsibility of this medical mistake. The department should have made sure that the doctor was able and qualified,’ he said.
The lawyer, who considered the case to be of a criminal nature, said he would ask the concerned authorities to suspend the obstetrician and all those involved in the case from work and to prevent them from traveling outside until the case was settled.
