A 15-year-old girl went into coma following a wrong diagnosis at a hospital in Al-Baha with her father alleging gross negligence and appealing to authorities to prosecute the hospital.

The man said his daughter was admitted to Al-Mikhawa General Hospital as she was suffering from tonsillitis. Initially, the doctor refused to hospitalize her as her condition seemed stable. “We went home but suddenly her condition took a turn for the worse, and two days later, we received a call from the doctor informing us that she would have to have her tonsils removed,” he said.

While at the hospital, another doctor said that the girl was suffering from a drug overdose and her stomach needed to be flushed. “When the doctor started this procedure, my daughter went into a coma and she was shifted to King Fahd Hospital in Al-Baha,” the father said. After a number of medical tests, the doctors in Al-Baha confirmed that the medical report was incorrect and that the girl had been given a wrong diagnosis.

According to the father, the report said that his daughter had taken medication for a mental disorder which caused the poisoning. But he denied that this was the case saying that she had never taken any such medicine.

The father has accused the hospital of causing serious harm and called on health authorities to intervene and investigate the hospital’s negligence which almost killed his daughter.

The spokesman for Al-Baha Health Affairs, Ahmad Al-Zahrani, said the patient had gone to an outpatient clinic on Nov. 23 to be treated for an inflammation of her tonsils. She was prescribed the necessary medication and put on the waiting list for an operation, he said.

The father was then given a call to bring his daughter for tests before the operation. The girl was admitted to the emergency department where following first aid and lab tests, doctors suspected a case of poisoning and transferred her to the special care unit. Al-Zahrani confirmed that the girl had not been operated on yet and was still admitted in the hospital.