By Abdullah Al-Yousef
BURAIDAH — An eight-year-old girl died in a hospital here due to an alleged medical error, the girl's father has said.
Rama Al-Mihaimid’s father said his daughter was admitted to King Fahd Specialist Hospital in Buraidah with swollen lymphatic glands.
“The specialist handling my daughter mixed up her name with the name of a boy named Rami. My daughter was wrongfully diagnosed to have cancer when she didn’t have any. My daughter was only five years old when she was first admitted to the hospital,” said the father.
He also said the medical team began giving his daughter chemotherapy thinking that she was the patient who was diagnosed with cancer.
“They discovered their error weeks later and then they stopped the chemotherapy sessions. The chemotherapy had already taken a heavy toll on my daughter and her health continued to deteriorate. We took her to a hospital in the United States and doctors there said my daughter’s condition was very rare,” said the father.
The father also said the doctors said my daughter was living between tumultuous episodes.
“She went in and out of coma multiple times. The status of her health was unstable. We stayed in the United States for 13 months. She had 12 corrective surgeries done. Then we had to take her back to the Kingdom as the regulations required. Once we did that her condition worsened. So we flew her back to the United States. The American doctors asked us to keep her in the hospital and continue her treatment there. But we had to take her back to the Kingdom as the regulations forced us to do so,” said the father.
The father said after his daughter was taken back to Saudi Arabia for the second time, she died.
“All I can do is pray to God that things will be good in my family. My wife, children and I were so attached to my daughter. Her entire case started with a medical error and ended in negligence. I urge every official in the Ministry of Health to reevaluate the treatment process they have in place. We spent the last weeks of her life waiting for the ministry to find a pulmonologist to treat her,” said the father.
He also said the Medical Commission decided that my daughter had to come back from the United States to Buraidah Children's Hospital, but there wasn’t any pulmonologist.
“We contacted the specialist hospital in Riyadh. They initially accepted my daughter’s case but then turned it down due to the non-availability of a specialist. I called the hospital my daughter was a patient at in the United States and they told me that she had to return to the hospital. The ministry did not support my request to take my daughter back to the United States,” said the father.
He said the US hospital began giving us a treatment plan through the phone.
“The doctors told us to stop one of the medicines. But all that it did to my daughter was giving her extreme pain. Her health kept regressing until she passed away. The Ministry of Health reproved the doctors who misdiagnosed her and gave her chemotherapy and held them responsible for their actions,” said the father.
