Boy was born with birth defects and contracted swine flu while in hospital for corrective surgery

Hospital says his hard-working father has to pay thousands in bills, despite his son catching virus there.

Abu Dhabi // K M and his wife have not had a full night’s sleep in the eight months since their youngest son, Khawaja, was born – because the baby cannot cry.

Khawaja was born with several defects – three holes in his heart, a closed trachea, a low immune system and paralysed vocal cords. At a few days old he had surgery to close the holes in his heart and a tube inserted in his throat and nose so he could breath and feed.

But there was no way to treat his vocal cords, which means that when he cries because he is hungry, in pain, unable to breathe or any other reason, he makes no sound, so his parents have to take turns watching him.

Doctors told the father of three that Khawaja had to be in a sterilised environment so the couple moved to more expensive two-bedroom apartment instead of their one-bedroom flat.

“I can live in any low-grade, cheap apartment but Khawaja can’t,” the father said. “Everything had to be completely sterilised and he had to have his own separate bedroom, away from his siblings.”

Despite the couple’s exhaustion they manage. They were overjoyed after their son’s operation.

But three months ago their son developed a high fever for a second time after being discharged from hospital three days earlier.

“We rushed him to the hospital again and they told us he had pneumonia,” his father said.

He was admitted for seven days but the day before he was due to be discharged the fever returned.

“I asked the doctors to do a complete check-up on my son. I knew something was not right. He had been through several courses of antibiotics and still his fever was not going down.”

After tests, doctors discovered that Khawaja had swine flu, which he caught in the hospital.

“The doctor told me that right before my son was born there were two cases of swine flu, so that was most probably how my son got the infection,” K M said.

The five-month-old boy was quarantined, but developed an acute respiratory infection and had to be moved to the ICU. His life was at risk and his chances of survival were slim.

“Doctors told me to just pray for him,” K ­M said.

Khawaja recovered after 25 days and the family rejoiced. “God has helped us many times. I thought I was going to lose my son,” the father said.

At the time of discharge the hospital gave the family a bill of Dh92,000, for the time spent in ICU at about Dh3,400 a day, and the regular hospital stay. K M protested.

K M had to put down a security cheque of Dh92,000 to be allowed to take his son home and now the hospital calls him every few weeks, demanding that he pay the bills.

“I don’t have this money. I need help to pay it,” K M said. He earns about Dh13,000 a month and has no health insurance.

“I’ve paid for all my children’s hospital visits myself. It costs me a few thousand but I would never have expected him to get swine flu and to one day have to pay this huge amount of money over a disease that was the cause of the hospital,” KM said.

Hisham Al Zahrani, manager of Zakat and Social Services at Dar Al Ber said: “K M has been in the UAE for 20 years. He works in the healthcare sector and has helped to heal thousands of residents. We hope we can help like he has helped many of us.”