CAIRO: Three-year-old Ibrahim Mohammed Abdel Mawgoud is a victim of neglect and medical malpractice, his mother said in a report she filed to the Cairo Attorney General asking for an investigation into the events that left her son a "living corpse . The child s mother said that she took her son to Seedi Salem Central Hospital after he developed a severe fever one night. They transferred the boy and his mother to the Humiat Hospital of Kafr El-Sheikh, given the seriousness of his condition. The mother spent the first three hours trying to find a doctor at the hospital and then had to buy the medicines prescribed to her by the "specialists at her own expense. By the sixth day the boy's body began to turn blue so she raced into the office of the hospital director, begging her to do anything for her son lest he die. According to the mother, the director kicked her out, saying: "Are you going to teach me my job or what? The mother said that with the help of a physician at the hospital called Dr Osama, she reached a competent specialist who told her that her son had been given the wrong medicine, making his case even worse, and that he should be transferred to the Cairo Fever Hospital immediately. The mother claimed that out of fear of taking the blame the hospital director and the original physician assigned to her son refused to have him transferred. The assigned physician assaulted Dr Osama and threatened him with legal action, the mother added. Abdel Mawgoud was eventually transferred to the Abbasia Fever Hospital, where he faced the same neglect, to the point that his mother was told that the boy was as good as dead and so there was no need to give him any treatment, she said. Her husband had to sell their furniture to pay LE 50 a day - for 20 days - for the boy's treatment, only to discover after the boy's transfer to Aboul Rish Hospital that he had been prescribed the wrong medicine again. The three-year-old was suffering from Meningitis and because of the blood coagulation the only way to save his life was to amputate his legs below the knee and his right hand. After staging a sit-in in front of the Governor's office the mother was given LE 300 as reimbursement for the money she paid for the treatment of her son.
