Dubai court finds doctor not guilty of negligence over football boy’s head injury

Father of 13-year-old Emirati boy refused immediate surgical intervention that British doctor recommended and took son to Germany for treatment.

DUBAI // A British doctor has been found not guilty of negligence in a case that involved a 13-year-old boy ending up with a 100 per cent disability.

The Emirati victim, F A, injured himself while playing football and suffered from a headache for four days before his father, M A, took him to Rashid Hospital.

Doctor M S carried out tests on the boy and told the father that his son was suffering from a blood clot on his brain and needed speedy medical intervention or else he might die.

The father did not initialy agree to a surgical procedure and only later did he allow the doctor to withdraw a large amount of fluid from his son’s brain.

Afterwards, the father and son travelled to Germany for treatment, where doctors said the boy had lost 70 per cent of his brain function.

Records did not state what, if any, treatment the boy received in Germany, but the father returned home and reported the British doctor to authorities.

The doctor told Dubai Health Authority’s medical committee overseeing the case: “I took an X-ray and an MRI scan of F A’s brain, he was suffering from a headache and immobility in his left hand. The boy needed urgent medical intervention or he might die. The father told me that he wanted to take his child abroad for treatment.”

Records show that the boy’s health deteriorated and the father then gave in to the doctor’s suggestion of a surgical procedure, which the father blames for his son’s paralysis.

The boy suffers from quadruple paralysis, brain-nerve paralysis, damage to the left cornea and epilepsy, which under UAE rules constitutes a 100 per cent permanent disability.

The doctor denied the charge of medical negligence in front of the medical committee and the court.

The medical committee report stated that the child’s parents had misinformed the doctor about the child’s state and that the doctor had also failed to document the child’s case according to international health standards, because he did not properly document that he had told the father about the need for surgery.

The parents did not give a full account of how exactly the injury happened and what symptoms the boy had suffered from in the four days before he went to hospital.

Dubai Court of Misdemeanours on Thursday said that there was no evidence of negligence from the report nor from the statement from the head of the medical committee.

The court concluded that the doctor had not undertaken any action that could have affected the child’s health in a negative or positive way.

Also, by informing the parents of the child’s medical situation, the doctor did what was ethically required of him and the court found that he was in no way responsible for the boy’s state.