By Abdul Hafiz Holani
(Zaman Al Wasl)- Sham Mohammad Arslan, 4-year-old refugee girl in Lebanon, has lost sight in her left eye due to medical mistake by a Lebanese doctor, father says.
Sham is in urgent need for a surgery for her eye costs $3000. Such a number that is seldom to find with any Syrian refugee in Lebanon.
The father noticed a small white smudge in his daughter’s left eye in August 2016. He took her to several doctors and hospitals in Lebanon searching for a medical solution so Sham would not lose her sight.
Mohammad Saeed Arslan and his daughter Sham, from the village of Kafr Aya in Homs’ countryside, ended up at Dr. Paul George Deeb’s, an ophthalmologist, clinic in the Lebanese city of Halba. Dr. Deeb prescribed some eye drops and informed him that Sham needed a simple operation to save her eyesight.
The doctor said he would perform the operation in the al-Mathloum hospital in Tripoli. The surgery did not save Sham’s sight but had the opposite effect.
Sham not only suffered the loss of sight in her left eye due to a medical mistake, but her eye became infected, and a strange growth appeared under the eyelid. Mohammad Arslan hurried to treat the infection and growth as doctors warned him that the infection might affect her right eye and cause her to lose her sight in that eye too.
Sham needs an eye restoration operation, a plastic surgery operation, that will not restore her eyesight but will fix the consequences of the medical mistake committed by the Dr. Paul George Deeb. Despite Dr. Deeb’s medical mistake, Dr. George Cherfan of the Beirut Eye Specialist Hospital refused to write Mohammad Arslan a medical report stating that a medical mistake was committed. Dr Cherfan said that Sham’s loss of sight was due to an acute infection and denied that any medical error was committed in operation.
Arslan decided to take Sham to the American University in Beirut for her to undergo the delicate eye restoration surgery there. The operation will cost $3000 and is due to take place on Wednesday.
Sham’s father is caught in a difficult situation: searching for someone who will cover the expenses of his daughter’s surgery which is due to happen in the next two days, and watching Sham say goodbye to the moon in the sky above Lebanon’s refugee camps as she fears losing sight in her right eye. If Mohammad Arslan is unable to find the sum to pay for the operation, then Sham will lose sight in her right eye and become blind.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.