The Madina Health Directorate has set up a committee to investigate a complaint filed by a Saudi against a medical team in a private hospital whose alleged negligence caused the death of his three-day-old infant and nearly killed the mother after the Cesarean section team left medical gauze inside her uterus four months ago. Mohammad Al-Mutairi, 33, said the medical team at the private hospital in Al-Awali District delayed the Cesarean section after the natural birth became complicated, which, he says, caused the baby to suffocate and die in the nursery three days after the operation. “The supervising doctor told me the baby needed to be moved to a government hospital as they do not have the facilities to deal with the condition which resulted from the operation,” Al-Mutairi said. “Three months after the incident, we discovered at the Maternity and Pediatrics Hospital that the pains my wife had been suffering from since the surgery were because of some object inside her uterus,” he said. “She was examined in another private hospital and it was confirmed that a piece of gauze was inside the uterus. It was extracted last month, but there are still problems caused by the bacteria that was on the gauze,” he added. Al-Mutairi said he demands that the hospital be held liable, and be forced to reimburse him for all the costs he bore as a result of its error and to compensate his wife for psychological and physical damages. The medical director at the private hospital that extracted the gauze from the wife's body, Dr. Ibrahim Rafe, said the extraction procedure was conducted on Nov 30 and the woman was discharged on Dec 6. The assistant general director of the Health Directorate in Madina, Khaled Abdulaziz Yaseen, said the complaint will be dealt with urgently. A specialized committee will be sent to the hospital in question and take charge of the woman's file. The Medical License Committee will follow up the case, collect reports and prepare a case file before submitting it to the Medical Violations Committee which will summon the concerned parties, he said. Members of the medical team responsible for the error will be banned from traveling until investigations are finished, he added.
