year dream to have children ended tragically here for a Makkah couple when they lost their unborn twin daughters because of allegedly poor treatment by staff at a local hospital. Ibrahim Matouq and his wife, who are in their thirties, yearned so much to have children of their own that they decided to undergo an expensive in-vitro fertilization technique. The wife, who cannot conceive naturally, underwent more than eight operations which cost over SR300,000. Eventually she fell pregnant with twins. She was in her fourth month of pregnancy when she started to feel terrible pain in her abdomen and started to bleed. Matouq then rushed her to hospital. He said he could not concentrate while driving her to the hospital because of her screams and the amount of blood in the car. He said the receptionists at the hospital refused to admit her claiming that there were no beds available. She waited in reception for about 11 hours, he said. After a heated discussion with one of the receptionists, they agreed to allow her to see a female gynecologist in the outpatient clinic. The doctor examined his wife and told her to go home and return after a few hours. However, after only three hours at home, she again started to experience pain, so he rushed her to the hospital again. He said that before reaching the hospital she lost one of the fetuses. When he arrived at the hospital, he screamed at the receptionist to provide a wheelchair. His wife was then taken into the emergency room where she lost the second fetus. She was also bleeding profusely but was not provided with proper medical care, he claimed. He said he rushed into the office of the hospital's director, who then ordered the medical staff to rush her into theater. The hospital's director, who declined to give his name, said he had personally followed the case of Matouq's wife and ordered an immediate investigation.
