Dubai court orders paediatrician and hospital to pay parents Dh500,000 over delayed care for a child who later died

Dubai: The Dubai Civil Court of First Instance ruled that a paediatrician and a private hospital, jointly, must pay the parents Dh500,000 as compensation for the moral damages they suffered, after it was proven that the doctor committed a medical error in failing to provide appropriate care for their child when he arrived at the hospital in a critical health condition. The doctor delayed the necessary medical intervention, which contributed to the rapid deterioration of the child’s condition before his death. The court confirmed, in the reasoning of its ruling, that the report of the Supreme Committee for Medical Liability proved the existence of a non-serious medical error in dealing with the child’s case, which was represented in the delay in providing the necessary care and examinations. However, the report concluded at the same time that the death was a result of the disease he was suffering from, and not the medical error. In detail, the parents filed a lawsuit demanding that the doctor and the hospital jointly pay them Dh1 million as compensation for the material and moral damages they suffered as a result of their child’s death, stressing that they admitted him to the hospital initially while he was suffering from a cough, difficulty breathing, and a skin rash, and his condition was diagnosed as bronchiolitis, and he received treatment with antibiotics and fluids. They explained that the child was discharged from the hospital despite his continued suffering, without proper assessment of his condition. They then took him back to the paediatric clinic a few days later due to the persistence of symptoms, but no additional laboratory tests were performed. They added that they were forced to readmit him to the emergency department again in a critical condition, after he showed seizures, cyanosis, severe pallor, and rapid heartbeat and breathing, which are indicators that require urgent medical intervention, which the medical staff did not provide him with, according to what was stated in the lawsuit, except for one dose of fluids during the initial hours, with a delay in conducting the necessary examinations, tests, and scans and calling in a cardiologist. They noted that subsequent tests revealed an enlarged heart and suspected myocarditis, as well as other symptoms suggesting Kawasaki disease or multi-system inflammatory syndrome, conditions that could have been suspected earlier if the symptoms had been dealt with appropriately. After his condition deteriorated, the child was transferred to a specialised children's hospital, where he received respiratory and circulatory support, but he suffered repeated cardiac arrests and was pronounced dead. The court explained that the report of the Medical Liability Committee of the Dubai Health Authority did not prove the existence of medical error at first, based on the difficulty of diagnosing Kawasaki disease in children, especially in incomplete or atypical cases, but the parents appealed the report before the Supreme Committee for Medical Liability. The Supreme Committee concluded that there was a non-serious medical error, represented in the failure to provide appropriate medical care to the child when he arrived at the hospital in a state of shock, stressing that this error contributed to the deterioration of his health condition, while the death was a result of the disease he was suffering from. The court was satisfied with the conclusions of the Supreme Committee’s report, and considered that the doctor had failed in his professional duties to provide the necessary care in accordance with accepted medical principles, which led to the deterioration of the child’s condition, and rejected the defence that aimed to deny the medical error. It pointed out that the child’s parents suffered severe psychological pain as a result of watching his health condition deteriorate rapidly, considering this suffering to be moral damage that deserves compensation, while it refused to consider the loss of the opportunity for the child to care for his parents and spend on them in the future as a material damage that deserves compensation in this case. The court concluded by estimating the compensation for moral damages at an amount of Dh500,000.