Soon after daring to question medical standards in Egypt, and raising the spectre of a wholesale failure to detect medical negligence, psychiatrist Nabil Al-Qott was assaulted, along with his friends, by a group of unknown assailants. It was the sudden death of Al-Qott's wife, prominent screenwriter Nadine Shams, that spurred Al-Qott into action. Shams died last month in the intensive care unit of Misr International Hospital, Dokki. Shams' family holds the hospital responsible for her death, believing that she was the victim of medical incompetence. She was admitted to the hospital for ovarian surgery. “Following her death,” Khaled Abdel-Hamid, an activist and a friend of the deceased recounts, “her husband was handed a report — that was not officially stamped — stating that Shams died as a result of a Breton inflammation that led to toxic shock. Yet when Al-Qott asked the hospital's administration for a stamped report the hospital administration changed the cause of death to pulmonary vein thrombosis so as to avoid any criminal responsibility.” Al-Qott subsequently filed a complaint and demanded a forensic doctor determine the cause of death. He accused the head of the hospital and two other doctors of negligence leading to Shams' death. Prosecutors have ordered the transfer of Shams' body to the Zeinhom morgue for an autopsy. The forensic report should be complete sometime this month. There have been growing calls on social network websites called for Misr International Hospital, the subject of several claims of medical negligence leading to the deaths of patients, to be closed. Last week Deputy Health Minister Sabri Ghoneim referred the doctors and hospital head accused of negligence in the Shams case to the Doctors' Syndicate disciplinary committee. The two doctors who conducted the surgery deny any wrongdoing. “I filed new evidence, reports and testimonies to the general prosecution and also the syndicate's committee earlier this month showing the surgeons' malpractice and hospital negligence,” Al-Qott said. He added that drawing attention to the extent of medical negligence in Egypt is the best thing he can do to honour Shams. Last Friday Al-Qott received a phone call from his father telling him that someone named Mohamed Al-Saifi had asked to meet him. “I called a couple of my friends in addition to my lawyer and asked them to meet me at home. On my arrival I sensed it was a fishy matter,” Al-Qott told Al-Ahram Weekly. “I found Al-Saifi along with my friends sitting in the garden of my house,” Al-Qott said. Al-Saifi produced a prosecution report which said one of his relatives had died after being hit by a car though there were no details about the vehicle in question. But Al-Saifi also had a handwritten paper which included details of my wife's car. “He accused us of responsibility for the death and asked for compensation. I called the police,” says Al-Qott. Al-Qott asked Al-Saifi about the provenance of the handwritten note and was told it originated with a taxi driver who witnessed the accident. “His answer didn't convince me. Neither I nor my wife had been involved in any accident. I simply waited for the police to arrive but as we were waiting two cars, one of them a Cherokee, stuffed with people holding batons suddenly appeared in front of the building. They attacked me and my friends and then ran away. And still the police didn't arrive.” “We went to the police station and filed a police report of what happened. The investigation is still underway.” Two days after the attack Al-Qott found a man standing in front of his home. “This person told me he was a mediator and started to apologise for the incident,” says Al-Qott. But when he asked the man who had furnished information about his wife's car being involved in the accident the man gave no answer and left. “I don't want anything, even the assault incident, to distract my attention away from the core issue of Nadine's death,” says Al-Qott. “Even if the police track the assailants there is the possibility that they too are victims, having been falsely told my wife was responsible for their relative's death. My only concern in that case would be that person who deceived them by passing false information be brought to justice.” Shams, a graduate from the Higher Cinema Institute, wrote the script for Ehna Etkabelna Abl Kida (We've met before), a 2008 film starring Nelly Kareem, and worked on the popular television series Moga Harra (Heat wave) and Bil Sham' Al-Ahmar (With Red Wax). “The major problem in the community of doctors is that doctors usually deny mistakes committed by fellow doctors. For me it is a type of sectarianism,” says Al-Qott. “There is an absence of any legal protection of patients from the mistakes of doctors. I'm not only seeking justice for my wife but the rights of all patients. New legislation is urgently needed that affords patients in hospitals recourse in the event of medical malpractice or negligence.”
