It was not possible to wait for the results of the judicial investigation to determine the responsibilities in the unfortunate incident at Salt Hospital. A political price had to be paid at the expense, and the Minister of Health, Dr. Natheer Obeidat, resigned by royal order, as stated by the Minister of State for Information Affairs, the official spokesman for the government, Sakhr Dodin.
The initial outcome of the lack of oxygen to hospital patients, seven deaths, in addition to critical cases suffering as a result of the damage they sustained. The resigned Minister of Health said that oxygen was cut off for patients in the intensive care rooms for an hour, and the Civil Defense intervened quickly according to the available information, to remedy the situation before the disaster escalated, and took over the hospital's supply of oxygen.
However, there are many questions that the Public Prosecution’s investigations will answer, about the circumstances and circumstances of the hospital’s depletion of oxygen, the failure of medical staff to notice the problem before it occurs, and the absence of alternatives in emergency situations.
This is not the first time that the hospitals of the Ministry of Health have faced a shortage of oxygen during the Corona crisis, and the cadres of the Ministry were able to remedy it without losses in more than one hospital. But a fatal flaw in the work system of Salt Hospital led to a grave mistake, for which we paid dear lives.
It is certain that the Ministry of Health system concerned with managing the Corona file bears the responsibility, as much as the hospital administration. We have accumulated enough experience in the past year that is sufficient to deal with such challenges, and an electronic monitoring system for the situation has been developed in all hospitals that enables the administration to determine the needs of each hospital, the operational capacity, the number of rooms and available beds, and other minute details.
But it is the management that always let us down in turns. Al-Salt Hospital has entered service and suffers from many shortcomings, and many advised the previous government to wait in opening the hospital before making sure of its complete readiness. On the opening day, I remember the statements of its director about a shortage of medical personnel and technical equipment, not to mention the mediations and subsequent interventions in the selection of its departments.
Over the past months, we have been hearing patients' complaints about problems in the hospital's work and a lack of services and staff, but no one has moved to correct them. This matter is not limited to Salt, but rather it is the complaint of all medical facilities in the governorates.
The management crisis hits all sectors. Long years of mismanagement and the dominance of the crony system in senior appointments at the expense of efficiency, have put our entire administrative system in a miserable state, with which a minister is forced to pay the price and assume political responsibility.
