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Court ruling on Aids case tomorrow

The woman, who was eight months pregnant at the time, was seeing a gynaecologist at the hospital when she was told she had HIV/Aids.

The first instance court issued its ruling in favour of the hospital on November 13, 2002.

The claimant filed an objection to the ruling with the appeal court, which in turn also rejected the objection and upheld the original ruling on February 9 of this year. The cassation court ruling will be final.

The woman and her Lebanese husband filed the civil suit against the hospital for putting them through unnecessary personal, financial and psychological trauma, added to which A.M.B. was unfairly suspected of having an extramarital affair as the only explanation for the HIV test result. Anger only set in when the test result was revealed to be a false positive, only after another blood sample was taken from A.M.B. and sent to Germany for further tests.

In the couple’s mind the damage had already been done, A.M.B. went through a traumatic last month of pregnancy and gave birth by Caesarian section. She felt compelled to travel to her home country to escape the stigma of being labelled an expatriate Aids patient, her husband was also forced to abandon his commitments and accompany her. In short, the couple’s life was turned upside down.

The couple felt strongly enough that an injustice had been committed against them and they filed a law suit against the hospital and the gynaecologist concerned asking the court to award them Dh2.5 million compensation for the psychological trauma they went through.

The Dubai Civil Court of First Instance rejected the lawsuit and found in favour of the defendants. According to the lawyer for the defence, Sameer Jaafar, the crucial question put before the courts was whether the hospital was legally at fault in any way in its testing procedures or the medical treatment provided to the patient.

“The gynaecologist informed the patient that a preliminary test showed she was HIV positive, but emphasised the possibility that it could be a false positive result, and in fact took another blood sample from the claimant to send for testing in Germany.

“The results were due to arrive from the German laboratory within 15 days, but in that time the patient had already travelled to Sweden and delivered safely. What supported our case was the fact that the first test the claimant had done when she arrived in Sweden was also a false positive, only a second test showed she was HIV negative,” Mr Ja’afar said.

An investigative committee formed by the hospital in question found that the claimant “was cared for in an appropriate manner” by the doctor in question. The gynaecologist concerned had referred the results of the test to the medical director of the hospital who recommended the sample be sent to a German laboratory for confirmation.

The patient had by then already received confirmation that she was HIV negative from a Swedish hospital.

The sensitivity and specificity of the ELISA or Antibody-based (HIV) tests, the test administered to the claimant, is greater than 99 per cent.

False positive results, however, do occur in multiparous women (those who have been through multiple pregnancies), in people recently vaccinated against influenza or hepatitis B, in patients who have had multiple blood transfusions and those with autoimmune disease.

• UAE