An ambulance vehicle is an extension of the hospital emergency room, but at the Lith Hospital it was a death march. The Shariah-Medical Committee at the Ministry of Health has ordered the compensation for the family of a pregnant woman who died half-way from Lith to Jeddah in an ambulance vehicle that lacked basic emergency equipment and supplies, including air-conditioning. The general prosecutor filed a lawsuit case against the Lith Hospital for providing a poorly-equipped ambulance to transport the woman along the 180-km road to Jeddah. The woman was seven months into pregnancy when she experienced acute pneumonia for which she was admitted into the hospital and was later taken on the ill-fated ambulance vehicle to Jeddah. The ambulance was not equipped with an oxygen cylinder or to provide cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. The family of the victim said that they would drop their private right of the case. But the public right would be upheld and the hospital would get a new well-equipped ambulance vehicle from next year's budget. The Shariah-Medical Committee was chaired by a Shariah judge with a team of medical consultants.
