St. Francis Hospital Nsambya has been dragged to the Civil Division of High Court in Kampala for alleged professional negligence.
The hospital is being sued by a mother identified as Rose Namara through her lawyers of Kirunda and Wasige Advocates. Namara, in her suit contends that she was admitted at St Francis Nsambya Hospital on April 12 2018 with labour pains and doctors advised her to undergo a caesarean section for the delivery of her baby girl.
However, during the operation she overheard surgeons saying they had injured the baby. The patient who was supposed to be discharged from the hospital four days after the operation, kept complaining of pain in her lower abdomen area even before being discharged. She claims that doctors dismissed her complaint saying the pain was a result of the C-section and went ahead to discharge her.
Namara adds that after a week, she returned to the hospital for review and doctors found fluid in her stomach but didn’t provide her any explanation on the cause of the abscess. According to documents before court, doctors recommended that Namara undergoes another urgent operation but no one attended to her since the doctor was not on the night shift despite the pain she was going through.
She says that due to the unbearable pain, she asked for her medical file to relocate to another hospital for attention.
However, the medics declined to surrender her file until the family decided to take her to Kampala Medical Chambers to attend to the infection urgently. She was admitted and operated on by Dr. Romano Byaruhanga and spent two months in the hospital without any relief to her initial problem.
"The plaintiff's situation still did not improve because the infection remained and the C-section wound did not heal. The doctors then referred to Kampala Imaging Centre for a full scan which revealed that a foreign object had been left inside the plaintiff during the C- Section”, reads the suit in part.
According to Namara, because of the growing medical bill, Dr. Joseph Turyabahika, the Senior Surgeon at Kampala Medical Chambers advised her to return and continue reporting for dressing of her wound. She says that Doctors continued investigating the cause of the abscess, pus and fluid in her abdomen, which cost her huge sums of money since she visited different medical facilities for various types of scans.
The plaintiff says that following numerous investigations by several professionals, it was discovered that the foreign object was the cause of her pain and recommended a third operation that was done on November 13, 2019, which eventually cleared the infection.
Namara states that since then, her efforts to get pregnant have remained futile. Through her lawyers, Namara states that she has spent Shillings 150 million on tests in various Laboratories and treatment and wants the hospital to compensate her Shillings 400 million in damages.
The court is yet to summon St. Francis Hospital Nsambya to file its defence to the suit.