Hospital accused of causing woman’s death

JEDDAH: A citizen has accused a private hospital in Makkah of causing the death of his wife during childbirth.
Emad Esmat said that he took his wife, who was pregnant for just over nine months with their sixth child, to the hospital on Saturday morning when she started complaining about labor pains, according to a report in a local publication.
“It was as though she sensed what would happen to her and wanted to leave the hospital to gather some more items for the baby, but the doctor told her she was about to give birth and had to stay there, and would not even be able to go to the bathroom.” He said she was taken into the delivery room with her mother where the doctor tried to deliver the baby after apparently giving her two injections. Her mother said that the doctor struggled for several hours and then delivered the baby, said Esmat.
He said that his wife was bleeding extensively when she was taken back to her room where her mother was waiting for her. He said that later that night he tried to speak to the doctor but found the doors to the facility locked and no staff around.
Esmat claimed that this had forced him to break into the department along with his five children, mother in law and her brother. He claimed that he had found his wife there dead, with hospital staff cleaning up traces of blood on the floor.
Esmat said hospital staff called the hospital’s security guards because he was so angry and took him to Al-Kaakia police station. He was told that he would have to file a complaint against the hospital if he believed there was malpractice.
He said he was shocked to receive a summons from the police station later, to face charges filed by the hospital against him for assault on staff and damage to hospital property. The hospital was claiming SR900,000 in damages, which he has rejected. The brother of the deceased, Abdullah Khayat, reportedly said that the accusations of the hospital staff were untrue and frivolous.
On Sunday, a committee formed by Makkah Health Director Mostafa Baljoun began investigating the incident involving the woman, Tahani Khayat. Spokesman of the directorate, Abdulwahab Shalbi, said the doctor has been banned from traveling until the probe is completed.