A woman whom the Shariah Medical Commission granted SR40,000 in compensation for a medical error has described the verdict as “disappointing”. The woman, who after an operation had a pair of medical scissors left in her abdomen for 40 months, filed an appeal in which she said the verdict “resembles” the hospital's medical error “in terms of the (amount of) compensation and the punishment of those responsible”. According to the commission's decision, the surgeon and his team of nurses have been absolved “despite their direct connection to my wife's suffering”, the woman's husband, Fayez Siraj, said. The woman decided to appeal the verdict to the Board of Grievances. According to her husband, she demands that the medical commission's decision be revoked and that damages be reevaluated. The appeal document said that the commission admitted that a medical error had been made and that the woman had been the victim of great negligence, and that this was not compatible with the amount of compensation as the negligence had led to the medical error. The document also said that the compensation should be compatible with the damage according to the basics of law and Shariah. The medical error, it said, necessitated that the woman undergo “ another surgery in which 15 centimeters of her small intestines were removed”. In three years, during which the scissors were inside the woman, the document claimed, she had suffered pain, seizures and severe allergies and incurred medical costs.
