MAKKAH — The new Maternity and Children Hospital in Makkah has already registered 21 death cases involving mothers and babies within three months of its opening. Medical errors were blamed for some of these cases, the majority of which took place over the past four weeks, according to a report prepared by a member of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) who recently visited the hospital. The NSHR decided to send its representative to the hospital following a number of complaints from patients regarding alleged medical errors. The report criticized the fact that the hospital did not have a sterilization room and sends its medical instruments to King Abdullah Medical City or Al-Noor Specialist Hospital, both located nearby, to be sterilized. Informed sources said the lack of a sterilization room has contributed to the high number of death cases. Sometimes, when the hospital receives many birth cases on the same day, medical staff end up using unsterilized medical instruments, leading to infections and subsequent deaths of newly-born babies, they said. The NSHR report also claimed that the hospital's building is not ready yet to receive a large number of medical cases. It also noted that the hospital needed more staff and equipment. The NSHR representative noticed that some divisions were run by one or two people only and some nurses worked more than 12 hours a day and ended up making medical errors because of fatigue and long work hours. Work at the neonatal intensive care unit and the operation room has not been completed yet while the section for patients with special needs was noticeably too small, although a big space has been allocated for the section, the report said. The hospital's medical director Dr. Waleed Al-Amri said just because many death cases have been registered lately, it did not mean that the hospital was not capable of providing good professional healthcare services to mothers and newborns. When Okaz/Saudi Gazette asked when the sterilization room would be ready, he answered that the room has been ready for two weeks. He said using unsterilized instruments was an improper medical practice and against medical norms. The hospital's departments have been equipped with state-of-the-art medical technology, he said, adding that work is being ongoing to open a second nursery with a capacity of 41 beds. He said the current capacity of hospital beds is 207 and the medical staff can handle all patients who come to the hospital, adding the hospital is working on increasing its beds to 320 to meet the increasing demand for its services.
