Health Affairs in Asir is investigating a complaint against a government hospital for dispensing out-of-date medicine to a child last month.
The spokesman for Asir Health Affairs said that a committee had been formed to look into the complaint and that appropriate action will be taken.
The father of the child said his son was admitted to the emergency department at the hospital one morning in the middle of last month suffering from acute stomach pains, and that he was given a prescription by the examining doctor.
“The medicine came in a bottle that looked old, and when I read the label I saw that it had passed its expiry date,” the father said.
He said he then approached the director of the hospital to present a complaint.
“He refused to take the complaint saying he was just an administrator, and that deciding on medical issues was not part of his jurisdiction,” he said. “He called the manager of the pharmacy who suggested it was just a minor matter, and asked me to give him the bottle so he could replace it, but I refused and threatened to go and complain to the relevant authorities.”
The father said the pharmacy manager in turn responded by saying: “Go wherever you want!”
The father has asked the head of Health Affairs in Asir to respond to the incident and investigate what he describes as the hospital’s “negligence” which could lead to “innocent victims”.
He also called for increased monitoring of medicines and for them “not to be left to turn into poisons which could kill people through negligence on the part of the people and supervisors who dispense them to patients”.
KHALID AAL MUREIH
Saudi Gazette