An alleged surgical negligence by medical doctors at the Sunyani Regional Hospital has left an eight-year-old girl bedridden with a gaping hole in her intestines.
Doctors at the Hospital who operated the primary two pupil last November of appendicitis, reportedly failed to properly stitch the young girl causing her stomach to swell.
The doctors were said to have used a tube to drain water that filled the swollen stomach after which they asked her parents to give her food; something that caused the stomach to be reddened and later developed into a sore causing the surgical stitches to open.
The once healthy looking girl, Priscilla Pomaa of the Chiraa Model Primary School in the Brong Ahafo Region has now lost weight and become what could best be described as a skeleton.
Four other surgeries that sought to correct what the mother of the girl claim were negligence on the part of the doctors failed, and the doctors are said to have declared they have “exhausted the level of their professional knowledge” on the girl’s condition.
She’s currently battling for her life. Sleepless nights arising out of pain, passing excreta through the gaping hole in her stomach through the opened intestines has become the agony of the girl and her mother. She’s now a sad spectacle.
Her mother, Mary Adumaa narrated to TV3 Online how it all started, saying her daughter returned from school one day complaining of headache so she gave her paracetamol as first aid but that did not help.
She said she took her to a private clinic at Chiraa where she was given an injection but that could also not get her child to feel better, hence she took her another private hospital, Karmo at Chiraa.
The young girl was hospitalised for three days “but still the condition of my daughter wasn’t improving so the Karmo hospital transferred her to the Sunyani Regional Hospital” where she was diagnosed of appendicitis, the mother told TV3 Online.
A day later, her mother said, doctors performed first surgery on the girl, noting “after the successful operation, we noticed that her stomach has swollen and the doctors said it was water, so the doctors pass NG tube to drain the water in the stomach and we were asked to give her food to eat, while eating, the stomach continued to reddened and developed into a sore and the operation place opened”
She said the doctors then performed a second surgery successfully about and four days later, “the operated hole opened again with human excreta coming from the place.”
“The doctors told me that during the second operation, some of the intestines were having holes on them but they managed to stitch. My daughter was sent for the third operation and the doctors said what will help the girl was to be given a fistula by the side, but still the third operation was not successful,” she told TV3 Online.
“They took her again to the theatre for the fourth operation and was given another fistula by the side to allow the human excreta to pass, but some of the excreta also passes through the operated wound. I was promised again that they will come and take her for the fifth time and that is going to be the last operation on her, so I agreed as the mother,” she continued.
“After the fifth operation, everything was normal until three days later the operated wound open again with the excreta coming from the wound. I then called the attention of the doctors and asked them about the opening of the operation and they told me that for now they can’t do anything again to my daughter,” she said in despair.
For Madam Adumaa, what she needs for her daughter now is God’s divine intervention and support from benevolent individuals and organisations, after which she hopes to seek justice.
Source: tv3network.com|Ghana