Malpractice brings unbearable suffering

Malpractice brings unbearable suffering

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nurul Qomariyah never imagined she would be a widow by the time
she was 26, left with a 2-year-old son and carrying an unborn
child.

"But what hurt me most is how I lost my husband in such a
careless way," said Nurul, a reporter for Internet news portal
detik.com.

It has been eight days since Nurul's late husband, freelance
journalist Eko Wariadi, died of malaria after being hospitalized
for one week.

But it was not until his last day in the hospital that doctors
diagnosed the disease.

"At first he just had a light fever, so we took him to the
nearby Pondok Gede Haj Hospital (East Jakarta). The diagnosis was
typhoid fever," Nurul said.

Instead of improving, Eko's condition worsened, with the
addition of a cough, breathing problems and stomach pains.

"Doctors insisted that he was having an asthma attack even
though I insisted that he didn't have asthma," Nurul said.

On the fifth day, his breathing problems became worse and Eko
started to have convulsions, his lungs swelled up and he
gradually lost consciousness.

But doctors still could not diagnose what was wrong with him.

A team of doctors then came up with kidney failure, but since
the hospital does not have a dialysis machine, Eko was
transferred to the Cempaka Putih Islamic Hospital in Central
Jakarta.

"A doctor there asked me whether my husband had been out of
town recently. I said yes, he had been to Lampung and Lombok in
the past one month," Nurul said.

Lampung is a province where malaria is still endemic.

"Apparently the doctor at Cempaka Putih knew right away that
my husband had malaria. Unfortunately, it was too late," she
said.

Nurul said she was not accusing the doctors of malpractice.

"I just regret so much that doctors can be so careless. I
wonder, do doctors in this country tend to be that way? Because
I've heard about so many malpractice cases here," she said.

And like other victims of malpractice, Nurul has opted not to
take legal action.

Numerous cases of malpractice came under the media spotlight
in 2002.

One case occurred in Bengkulu, where a patient died on the
surgery table at M. Yunus General Hospital after mistakenly being
given the deadly carbon dioxide instead of nitrous oxide.

The case was brought to court but judges found the doctors
innocent, saying they had only administered the gas that had been
provided by the hospital.

Many incidents occur during childbirth, such as two
malpractice suits brought in Bekasi last year by women who had
undergone caesarean sections.

The first case involved Lusi Ariani of Rawalumbu Bekasi, who
found that she had a wound on her calf after her caesarean
section. After repeatedly asking the doctor where the wound came
from, he admitted that she had been cut on the calf by a piece of
equipment during the surgery.

The second case occurred at Mitra Keluarga Hospital and
involved a woman named Sutiyah. The surgeon cut her baby while
performing a caesarean section.

The father brought the case to the police and asked for
compensation from the hospital.

However, neither case seems to have gone anywhere in the
courts.

And in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra, a woman named Yusnita
died after giving birth after the hospital mistakenly gave her an
infusion of the wrong blood type.

The mother lost a lot of blood while giving birth, so a doctor
took a blood sample that he read as type A while it should have
been type O.

Like many other victims of malpractice, Yusnita's family did
not pursue the matter in the courts. It could be that they just
assumed the court's decision would favor the doctors.