14-year-old boy killed on road as driver flees

A 14-year-old Emirati boy was knocked over by a car driven by a national woman in Sharjah and died at hospital later, triggering accusations by relatives that the hospital had not done enough to save his life.

The boy, identified as HMS, was on his bicycle near his house at the Sharjah airport park area on Thursday when he was hit by the vehicle, whose driver ran away without trying to rescue the boy or report the accident to the police.

“He was left on the road bleeding before he was seen by his brother, who phoned the police…the boy was then transferred to Al-Qassimi hospital, where he was admitted to the intensive care unit…he stayed there in a critical condition until he died yesterday (Sunday) morning,” his relative Hussein Abdullah said, quoted by the Arabic language daily 'Emarat Al Youm'.

“I wonder why their intensive care unit is not equipped properly…I also don’t understand why their medical team who attended to the child failed to stop his bleeding, which continued for three days.”

The paper quoted Dr Mohammed Al Ulama, brain surgeon at the hospital, as saying the boy was admitted with serious injury in the brain and multiple fractures in the legs and left hand.

“The medical team gave him the necessary first aid before moving him to the intensive care unit…but his condition rapidly deteriorated, which means that surgical intervention at this stage will not work…so we concentrated our efforts on giving him medicines but his condition continued to get worse and he died yesterday morning,” he said.

The paper also quoted the hospital’s director, Dr Abdul Wahid Al Wahdi, as dismissing relatives’ claims that the intensive care unit is not well equipped. “We will not receive any patient unless we are sure the section is equipped properly…as for complaints that we did not move the child to another hospital, this decision could be only taken depending on the patient’s condition and whether the patient can be moved or not.”

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.