- A Saudi man buried his wife's uterus instead of a dead fetus due to a hospital mixup
- The wife was in her fifth month of pregnancy when she underwent hysterectomy due to severe bleeding
- Three days after the burial the man received a call from the hospital saying the fetus was still in the nursery
- He said he called the Ministry of Health's emergency number to report the incident, but no response was received
A Saudi man buried what he thought was the dead fetus that he received from Rafha General Hospital where his wife, who was into the fifth month of pregnancy, had undergone hysterectomy following severe bleeding.
To his utter surprise, the man received a call from the hospital three days later saying that the fetus was still in the nursery and that he must come and receive it, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
The Ministry of Health's office in the Northern Border province said that preliminary investigations confirmed that the mixup was the result of a "procedural error" at the relevant department in the hospital. It said the citizen received his wife's uterus without the fetus.
The father, who asked not to be named, said that he took his wife, who was five months pregnant, to Rafha General Hospital with severe bleeding. The medical team that attended to her decided to surgically remove her uterus with the dead fetus, which posed a grave threat to her life.
"They told me that they had to surgically remove the fetus, which was dead, along with the uterus. Then they handed me what I thought was the fetus. We performed the Janazah prayer and buried it in a cemetery. Three days later, I was surprised to receive a call from the hospital administration saying there was a mistake: We were given the uterus instead of the fetus," said the father.
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"The fetus was sent to the nursery where it remained for three days. We do not know how such a strange mistake occurred, why the fetus was transferred to the nursery in the first place and why we were not informed of this. All these questions were raised in the complaint I submitted to the hospital management."
He said the hospital management ignored his complaint. He did not receive any apology for what had happened, nor did they promise to open an investigation.
He said he called the Ministry of Health's emergency number to report the incident, but no response was received from the ministry either.
"The citizen had filed a complaint at the time and it was referred to the competent authority in Rafha health affairs, which launched an investigation," Faleh Al-Ruwaili, director of public relations in the Health Affairs in the Northern Border province, said.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
