Medical errors .. A new killer threatens the lives of Iraqis

Marwan Jubouri - Baghdad

She was 21 years old at the Ghazi Hariri Hospital in Baghdad's medical city, but her family was surprised by the patient's medical team telling them about the death of their daughter about four hours after she entered the operating room.

It was a shocking and unexpected shock that provoked a storm of angry reactions, both media and popular, in solidarity with the family of the victim and reopening the file of medical errors in Iraqi health institutions.

Some say that medical errors in Iraq are constantly repeated, simple cases that result in the loss of life due to excessive doses of anesthesia or the result of poor diagnosis, which has shown the reputation of Iraqi doctors for a lot of damage, and some Iraqis to travel abroad to India, Turkey, Jordan, In search of safety and escape this tragic fate.

Not only are the results of these mistakes on death, many victims have suffered permanent disabilities such as blindness or paralysis, such as Hajaj Kazem Nima, 67, who decided two months ago to perform a process of pulling water from his eyes in Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City, Baghdad, but the result His retinal puncture caused him to lose sight.

Haj Kazem says he was forced to go to a public hospital because the cost of treatment in private hospitals is very high, but the result is that he has lost the ability to see fully, and is preparing to file a lawsuit against the doctor supervising the operation, or even sue tribal, he said.

Government action
But many believe that the percentage of errors in Iraqi hospitals is still within the universally accepted rates, taking into account the extent of damage to Iraqi health structures over the past years.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif Al-Bader said the medical and legal error must be proven before the ministry can take action in this regard by identifying the type of error and the circumstances associated with it and those responsible for it.

Al-Bader describes most of these errors as unintentional, adding to Al-Jazeera Net that they are waiting for the forensic report before taking any action, in order to autopsize the body and determine the type of error and the extent of the injury to the victim.

If the responsibility of the doctor or team supervising the operation is subsequently established, the victim's relatives have the right to initiate a legal action to determine the nature of the penalty.

Al-Bader confirmed that the ministry has a disciplinary law to study these cases and determine the penalties for those responsible, ranging from administrative penalties or dismissal and isolation according to error and degree, he said.

On the second day of the incident, the issue was raised before the forensic certificate was issued, although the report sometimes takes a few weeks.

The spokesman for the ministry accuses some media of "objectivity and resorting to non-professional methods" to incite public opinion against medical staff, relying on the words of the family of the victim without knowing the circumstances of the accident or waiting for the results of the investigation, although this needs reports from specialized medical committees, According to what he sees.

Errors and Attacks
According to parliamentary sources, Iraqi hospitals have seen about 4,000 medical errors since 2003, causing many deaths and disabilities.

These errors occurred in government and private hospitals and led to many conflicts between the families of the victims and the medical staff responsible for these errors.

Although the Protection of Doctors Act passed by the House of Representatives in 2013 includes protection of this category from any attacks that may affect them, dozens of them are subjected to a year of beatings, detention and killing sometimes, because of accusations of causing the deaths of some patients.

The government hospitals in Iraq suffer from a great shortage of medical supplies, medicines and staff working in them and lack of hygiene. The assassinations that targeted dozens of doctors after the US invasion led to the migration of large numbers of them outside Iraq or to the Kurdistan region, which caused a large gap that the government could not compensate.

The doctor at Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad complains of what he sees as "lack of understanding" by many parents of their families. Some operations have a limited success rate, and the parents are told. However, the death of the patient prompts them to pour their anger on medical personnel and beat them. Or request for financial compensation.

Ali tells many stories about his colleagues being beaten and insulted, forcing some to emigrate or leave their workplaces to escape these abuses.

The doctor does not conceal his weakness and lack of government procedures in providing protection to them, pointing out that they are constantly subjected to harassment that they face storms of criticism community without realizing the nature of their work and the magnitude of the risks they face, and the difficulty of the circumstances surrounding them, leading to some errors sometimes, .