Much outrage has become in Saudi Arabia when a twelve year old girl had been given HIV-positive blood. Many people want the health minister to quit his job. In the Islamic kingdom (which is very ultraconservative), HIV and AIDS is not a common topic. Now, this case (of Reham al-Hakami) has started to cause some issues across the country.
An investigator of the government-backed Human Rights Comission, Mohammed Almadi, has said that Reham al-Hakami had sickle cell anemia and that that she had received a blood transfusion on February 12. She had received in Jazan which is her hometown. Later in the day, some medical officers told the family that the blood was HIV-positive. Next, she was taken to a hospital (King Faisal Specialist Hospital) in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh. We have not been told whether Reham has been tested positive for HIV. Almadi said "This was a case of negligence."
There has so much discussion on the topic which caused the Health Ministry to report a statement on Monday. The statement called the incident a "critical error" They also apologized to the girl, the family, and the Saudi Arabian Society. The ministry is investigating the issue. They posted that the issue was "acting on behalf of the family as the legal guardian in seeking compensation and to ensure that the legal procedures and the decisions made by the legal health councils will be carried out in her case." There is a video of Reham, online, saying "I need you to stand by me and pray for me."
Around seven Health Ministry officials were injured and some were even fined, even the AIDS programs, said the report, which does not say anything about HIV. This rarely happens in this bureaucratic kingdon. Normally government institutions remain silent. A well-known television presenter on the MBC channel, Daoud al-Sharian, wants the Health Minister, Adullah al-Rebiah to resign. He said "I wish, just once, that a minister would resign over (his ministry's) mistakes. If a case like this happened in other countries, not just one minister but several ministers would resign."
A local paper that goes out often in Saudi Arabia said that the Minister went to visit the girl in the hospital on Saturday and gave her an ipad. This has sparked mocking comments on social networks. There is line that has been posted various times online which has shown how angry these citizens are. The line is "Hey sorry about what happened so take this ipad and download some apps while you are waiting to die." There was also another post that was an Arabic tweet by the Saudi Arabian preacher, Adel Al-Kalabani. It was retweeted around 4,000 times. The tweet was "This should go into the Guinness Book as the cheapest compensation ever."
However, Al-Rabiah has claimed that this is not compensation by saying "I couldn't go empty-handed to the hospital to visit her for the first time." Apparently, he had asked Health Officials what Reham had wanted, and she had said an ipad to listen to Quran, Islam's holy book. He said "So I asked my colleagues to prepare an ipad and put some games on it as well as Quran. As a father, if I visited her without bringing anything with me, I would have blamed myself."
The family's lawyer, Ibrahim al-Hakimi, said the family plans to sue the Ministry "Starting from the most senior official and including all employees involved in this medical mistake." They are still in shock.
Analysis: The main idea of this article is that a girl was given a blood transfusion, but unfortunately the blood she was given had HIV in it. It is still unclear whether the girl has HIV. The family plans to sue the Health Minister. The authors of this article, Schams Elwazer, Mohammed Jamjoom, and Samya Ayish wrote this article to tell of what awful this has happened to this girl and how this has caused outrage in Saudi Arabia. There was bias against the Health Minister, but I agree with it.
I was shocked after I read this story. This poor girl may die all because of a medical mistake. I can't believe that the hospital would not check the blood to make sure it is healthy before putting it into this girls' body. I feel horrible for her and her family. I agree with the family suing the Health Minister because it is just an unintelligent mistake that shouldn't have even happened in the first place. All I can do is hope that this girl is not infected, but even if she doesn't have HIV she could be a carrier which would affect her future generations. I hope the hospital has learned its lesson.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/20/world/meast/saudi-arabia-hiv-case/index.html?hpt=imi_c2
It's sad that a mistake this serious could have been easily prevented.
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