Doctors suspended after boy dies on operating table
Manama, May 27, 2014
Three doctors have been suspended following the death of a 12-year-old boy on the operating table in Bahrain.
The child has been identified as Sayed Sajad Murtada, from Sitra, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister pubilcation.
He was undergoing surgery at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) yesterday when he died, the Health Ministry announced.
It said the three doctors involved had been suspended for three months while an investigation is conducted.
"The investigation will check into possibilities of a medical error in the death, which happened in the SMC operating theatre," it said.
"The child, who was taken in for an emergency procedure for his illness, passed away following complications despite best efforts to save him.
"The three doctors who handled the case have been suspended for three months, the time set for the probe."
The statement pledged that the findings of the investigation would be made public.
The National Health Regulatory Authority is conducting an inquiry into the death.
"We received a fax communication from the ministry at 1.45pm, which said that a 12-year-old died during medical procedures," said chief executive Dr Baha Eldin Fateha.
"We have initiated the investigation."
Sources said the child was undergoing a routine hernia repair condition, but complications during intubation meant he required a tracheotomy.
However, it is not clear how that led to his death.
His father Murtada Mohammed Jawad said his son had been in the SMC for a hernia condition affecting his left lung for a month.
He said doctors informed him yesterday morning that his son needed surgery immediately.
"They took him for surgery and after an hour I was told that he was no more," Jawad told the GDN.
He said that he met two doctors - an Indian and an Egyptian - and a Bahraini anaesthetist after his son's death.
"They told me that while they were trying to put a tube inside him through his neck, his condition got complicated and his body refused to accept oxygen, which proved fatal," he said.
"I have raised a complaint at the Health Ministry."
He said he also planned to seek legal action.
Sayed, a student at Sitra Primary School, was buried at Sitra cemetery.
Two SMC doctors were suspended last September following the death of 12-year-old Fatima Ali Hussain during a routine procedure to treat an ovarian cyst. - TradeArabia News Service
