Tomorrow the Medical Society will witness the first elections after the failed coup of Feb14 in 2011. I urge all loyalists and honorable doctors to choose the Doctors of "List of Loyalty to the Profession" as follows:
1. Dr. Maha Al-Muqla
2. Dr. Mohamed Al-Sowaidi
3. Dr. Ghada Al-Qasem
4. Dr. Mohamed Al-Nofaiai
5. Dr. Mohamed Khalid
6. Dr. Jenan Al-Harith
7. Dr. Sharyan
The Bahraini people suffered from the criminal doctors were at SMC during the unrest.
We don't want again to repeat the same drama.
We don't want again Salmaniya Medical Complex to be in SIEGE!
A HOSPITAL IN SIEGE
The last
couple of months at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) have been quite dramatic.
It was not a hospital but rather a political staging and propaganda ground
where we had to work in an unsafe environment and silently witness this carnage
of humanity and the medical profession.
It all
started during mid-February when the police had fired teargas to disperse the
so called “Peaceful Protesters”. I was summoned to the hospital prior to my
shift as a disaster was announced and to my surprise the complete are in front
of the emergeny and its car park were occupied by angry protesters. Fearing my
safety and not knowing what to do I condulted my seniors and having parked my
car a couple of kilometers away from the hospital I managed to sneak inside
with a group of doctors from one of the back entrances. This was the general
atmoshphere during the initial event.
As things
settled down over the course of the next few days I was getting a better idea
of what was
going on. The hospital was in siege and was not a place of
treatment but rather a strategic stronghold of these people. Tents were set up
all over the car park and were used for various purposes such as:
1. Displaying
empty tear gas canister.
2.
Distributing food and tea (Sponsored by whom?)
3. Issuing
media passes to certain reporters
4.
Displaying handicrafts of the pearl roundabout and life sized graves
5. Media Centre
with loud speakers and large screen multimedia projectors with satellite TV.
The area around the accident and emergency had a lot of posters and hate graffiti with disrespectful messages such as “Down Down Hamad”. The place resembled the streets of a third world country during election time and it was quite surprising that although a lot of us felt humiliated with what was going on, none of us had the courage to remove any of this stuff during the entire month for fear of our safety.
The so
called clerics would frequently give speeches and during the rest of the time
we had our Iranian neighbors conveying their messages via the multimedia
projectors. These clerics would also tour the hospital and visit patients and
doctors alike.
The security
personnel were not an issue and that’s because there were none! On normal days
we had a few policemen stationed at our emergency but with the arrival of the
protesters these guys had vanished from the hospital fearing their own lives.
The fact
that these protesters were still camped at the hospital 24/7 even after the
government withdrew all confrontations and were pursuing negotiations gave me
an eerie sense of highly organized strategies employed by the protesters. This was
hacked by many other factors including one particular conversation that I had
with one of the protesters who seemed to be in charge where he told me how had
men stationed all around the hospital and that they were to inform him of any
police activity nearby. These guys definitely did have a strong hierarchy and a
chain of command.
Most of the
patients received during these incidents were malingerers who were supported by
shia nurses and doctors whereas a handful of them had pellet wounds. Any person
who even had a scratch or even less than
that were eligible to be rushed inside the hospital by ambulances and
private cars at full speed and to be carried by a handful of other people
giving the impression of god knows what.
On the 13th
of March I was assigned to triage the patients and none of the patients who
passed by me had anything serious and all of them were malingerers. Only one
old man had a slight ankle sprain. The rest was simply a stage show where
wailing crowds of women in black insulted the King while the patients were
dramatically being rushed in.
Treatment of
patients was another issue because the ABCs of medicine (Airway, breathing
& Circulation) was not practiced. It was more like PABCs where Photography
of wounds and propaganda images were given priority.
Another issue
was the activations of Disasters Codes where bypassing all proper channels the
arrival of even couple of non-serious patients was enough to activate a
disaster! At times the operator would announce on the hospital speakers summoning
all doctors from all over the hospital to assemble at the emergency.
A lot of
doctors were unnecessarily in the emergency department treating protesters and
issuing press statements besides hampering our own work. On one particular day
I was assigned in the resuscitation room (RR) and things were in chaos as
doctors and nurses from God know where were inside. The Head of the A&E,
Dr. Jassim Mehza was later called in to help bring some order to the chaos and
I clearly recall him asking all the doctors and extra staff to leave demanding
a max of 4 staff per bed (2 Nurses, 1 Emergency doctor and 1 Surgical doctor)
and in spite of this a lot of people refused to leave. Dr Jalila ( A medical
consultant) even had the courage to scream and insult at Dr. Jassim Mehza while
Dr. Samahiji (An eye doctor) was equally stubborn. Dr. Jassim Mehza was later
physically assaulted but the staff and mob while he was exiting the room.
The number
of regular patients during these couple of months had diminished as most of the
people were afraid to come to this hospital. The atmosphere among our
colleagues at the emergency was also gradually changing. I noticed some of them
including Dr. Bassem and Dr. Jehad being more vocal with their support of the
Antigovernment protesters.
A lot of
propaganda was also spread via facebook and some of the active people included:
1. Dr.
Bassem
2. Dr. Dunya
Hasmi
3. Dr. Heba
4. Dr. Asfoor
5. A person
who goes by the name of “Staff Nurse”
Things
started spiraling out of control towards the last few days of their siege when
expatriates were targeted and doctors threatened (and filmed by the protesters)
for treating Pakistani Patients. It was during that time that I decided that enough
and that the conditions were absolutely not safe to work in. Luckily for us the
army had regained control over the hospital over the next few days making it a
safe enough environment for us to work in.
All the
recent events have revealed the true faces of a lot of doctors and nurses who
have violated their oaths and engaged in politics instead and has shown me how
the occupation of a country’s main hospital can have a critical and devastating
effect.
HONORABLE DOCTORS DON'T LET BAHRAIN DOWN !
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