A Saudi citizen has accused the medical center at the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) of negligence leading to total paralysis of his 23-year-old daughter Fatima. She is now in coma.

The father, Abdul Aziz Al-Juhani, claims his daughter got a shot at the medical center without any of the staff referring to her medical file when she was admitted to the emergency department.

Al-Juhani told the local media that his daughter is lying currently in the intensive care unit at the center on a ventilator with complete paralysis of all parts of her body.

“My daughter suffered high temperature a week ago and we moved her to the emergency department at the medical center in RCJY. She was administered solvents to bring down her temperature. This was exactly at 10 p.m. and an hour after midnight she was discharged,” he claimed.

He said as Fatima’s condition worsened in the morning, he took her back to the hospital suffering from retention of urine and severe pains.

“A doctor there gave her solution and an injection in her thigh without referring to her medical file,” he added.

The doctor and nurses used transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on her feet from eight in the morning until 11 a.m., according to the father.

“Then my daughter told me that she feels her feet are very hot. But half an hour later she lost all sensation and feeling in them,” he added.

He said she was admitted as an in-patient for ultrasound examination, but soon enough she lost all sensation in her hand.

“Next morning they took her for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and by seven in the evening she suffered a spasm. A number of doctors and nurses tried a cardiopulmonary resuscitation for three hours after which she was moved to the intensive care unit. Now she is totally paralyzed. My daughter badly needs a neurologist, and a hemodialysis procedure, but the center here lacks such equipment and specialists,” he said.

Al-Juhani appealed to Minister of Health Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah to investigate the issue at the medical center and demanded that his daughter be transferred to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah, or the National Guard Hospital, the only two hospitals in his area that treat such cases.

He added that he already got approval to move his daughter but the center refuses to do that saying her health condition is stable now.