By Mabinty M. Kamara
Zainab Kamara, 28, still lives with a pair of scissors in her abdomen which was allegedly left there during a caesarean operation she underwent seven years ago. She has since been having difficulty moving her right leg and has endured persistent bleeding which has brought her discomfort and stigmatization among her peers. She only knew she had the instrument in her abdomen at the Kambia Government hospital after a pelvic x-ray was conducted.
Her attempts to have the scissors removed have failed with apparently no hospital willing to take her in.
In our 14 June 2021 publication, we reported that she was to be admitted at the Mabeseneh hospital on that day and was indeed admitted there for the surgery to remove the forceps from her abdomen.
However, we later learned from Zainab and the head of the Society for Disabled Welfare that she was later rejected by the hospital after she was taken into the theater for the surgery citing high temperature.
Zainab said she was discharged and sent to the Port Loko Government hospital at night where her initial surgery had been done that led to her problems, but didn’t feel comfortable being there. On the following day she was taken back to Kambia where she resides.
The Executive Director of the Society for Disabled Welfare, Joseph Allieu Kamara said they were not told why they couldn’t do the surgery at Mabesseneh but that they were trying to see how they could get the doctors in Kambia to do the surgery.
A senior official at Mabesseneh Hospital told Politico they were concerned that there had been a litigation over the botched surgery that had left the forceps inside the patient. “So we were concerned that we might have to testify against a colleague doctor in court”.
We have seen or heard no evidence the matter has been taken to court. Neither Zainab nor the organization campaigning for her knows of any litigation either.
Authorities at the Port Loko Government Hospital say they are happy to carry out the surgery there. But the doctor who led the botched surgery works there and Zainab is too traumatized to want to go under the knife there.
Zainab was taken to the Mabesseneh Hospital by the organization championing her cause, after she had identified a Dr Isaac Sesay currently based at the Kambia Government hospital as being a part of the medical team that had conducted the surgery on her in Port Loko, and so felt unsafe to go under the knife again having him around.
Dr. Sesay could however not confirm to Politico in our earlier interview whether he was indeed part of the team that conducted her surgery in 2014. He however admitted working in the hospital during that period. He said only the hospital records could prove if he was part of the team or not.
According to Zainab, life has been more traumatic for her after the X-ray than when she didn’t know what her problem was. There are concerns that her medical and mental states could be badly compromised by her experience.
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