Social media in Libya was buzzing with a video that sparked widespread anger in the country, as a medical staff filmed a woman who was undergoing a caesarean section.
The video clip showed the woman, following being anesthetized, inside the operating room in a government hospital in the Mizda region, in southern Libya, on Monday night, accompanied by a doctor who ensured that the fetus was removed from her stomach, and then delivered to the accompanying medical staff.
While someone filmed the entire scene and broadcast it on the hospital’s Facebook page, where thousands watched it.
“public crime”
While the scene sparked widespread discontent with the behavior of the medical and administrative staff of the hospital, communication activists denounced the lack of respect for the rules and ethics of the profession, the sanctity of the patient, and human and medical values.
Commenting on this, the head of the National Human Rights Committee in Libya, Ahmed Hamza, stressed that the hospital administration’s publication of the clip is a “public crime,” calling on the Ministry of Health to take urgent legal measures by conducting an administrative investigation with the director of the General Hospital as a result of intentionally violating the law, especially the text of Article 13 of the Liability Law. The medical profession that forbids disclosing patient secrets.
In her turn, activist Malak Youssef said that what happened inside the hospital is a “moral crime and irresponsible behaviour,” calling for the medical staff to be transferred to the Public Prosecution Office to investigate these abuses.
The hospital administration responds
In response to these criticisms, the hospital administration deleted the video, confirming in a statement that “what was published of a live broadcast of a caesarean section came following obtaining written permission from the guardian of the case belonging to a woman passing through from the south, so that her family might see her first child while she was far from them.” “.
This prompted a response from the political activist Hassan Al-Saghir, who wrote a post on Facebook, in which he said: “You are a government hospital and you do not provide a program for what the entertainers demand.”
