According to press reports, the alleged negligence of a private hospital staff caused the death of a patient who was administered the wrong blood type during her delivery operation. Khushab’s Mohallah Awan Pura resident Shah Jehan’s wife Rehana was brought to a private hospital for a routine check-up during the third trimester of her pregnancy.
Dr Shazia Majeed, initially, assured the family and Rehana that the delivery was a routine procedure and that there were no complications but she later advised the family that an operation was necessary. “She told us that the baby was in distress and that she needed to operate immediately,” said Rehana’s mother Ismat Begum, adding “then she asked us to arrange for B-positive blood without even having conducted a blood test.”
Dr Majeed operated on Rehana after the blood had been arranged and delivered a healthy baby girl. A few minutes after the operation Rehana’s wounds kept on bleeding and her blood pressure lowered considerably. “Her condition kept worsening and a group of doctors asked us for permission to re-operate,” said Shah Jehan. Dr Rashid Qudoos, Dr Zafar Iqbal and Dr Shazia sought permission from the family to conduct another operation on Rehana but the family refused to give their consent.
The doctors told the family to arrange for O positive blood to be administered to the patients. “That was when we began to get suspicious. They asked us for B positive earlier and for O positive after her condition worsened. When we questioned them, they categorically avoided us,” Shah Jehan said.
The doctors then operated on Rehana for a second time in a private room instead of an operation theatre and locked the room door.
“They didn’t tell us they were going to operate and we kept looking for them in the hospital,” Rehana’s brother Malik Imran said. After two hours the doctors opened the door and told them that the situation was under control now and there was no need to worry.
At 9 pm when Rehana’s condition worsened again, the doctors told the family that she was not going to survive. “They came and told us that even though she was fine earlier now her condition was beyond their control and that we should shift her to a bigger hospital,” Imran said.
The family shifted her to Islamabad PIMS where doctors told them that the patient was clinically dead and only had a three per cent chance of survival. Doctors rearranged all the tests and said the infection had spread and was initially caused by the patient being administered the wrong blood type. “She couldn’t be helped, her liver and lungs were shutting down and her platelets were extremely low,” PIMS Dr Khalid said. Rehana died a few hours later.
Shah Jehan and Rehana’s brother Malik Imran blamed the hospital administration for administering the wrong blood to Rehana and said that later on she was operated on in an unsterilised room.
The family protested against the hospital administration and appealed to the Punjab chief minister and the chief justice to take action in this regard. “Dr Shazia’s MBBS degree should be scrutinised because no real doctor would allow operating on a patient in an unsterile environment,” Imran said.
Hospital director Zafar Iqbal Bhatti rejected the charges by the deceased woman’s family. All the accused doctors refused to comment on the situation.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 16th, 2010.
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