Aya is a 14-year-old girl who fell down the stairs and broke her leg, which necessitated a surgery. After the surgery, however, the doctors told her mother that the screws they had placed in her leg were replicas. “They had to amputate,” the mother said.
Nasser is a 50-year-old who broke his leg in a car accident. “They placed four screws in my leg in a specialized hospital,” he said, adding that he suffered from serious complications six months later. “They had to replace the screws because they were replicas, but I have not been able to walk without crutches ever since.”
Mohamed Suleiman is 60 years old. He had three operations done on his arm over a period of six months at the Al-Fanar Center in Alexandria. “None of the screws were originals,” he said. “Now I can hardly move my arm.”
Health Ministry officials told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the center and all the shops around it are selling medical tools that are not registered at the ministry, which is prohibited. Yet the doctors from the center are still telling the patients to buy the tools from those shops to be used in operations.
Additionally, many companies sell tools on the Internet, such as the Al-Mostafa Company, Al-Tantawi Company and Al-Rahma Company, none of which are licensed or registered with the Health Ministry, but still work with hospitals and clinics in a clear violation of the law.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
