RIYADH: Health officials here have ordered an investigation into the death of an infant in an ambulance reportedly caused by depletion of oxygen while on his way to a specialist hospital in Riyadh, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.

“A committee of medical and legal experts has been set up to investigate the accident in an ambulance belonging to a hospital in Shaqra in Riyadh province on Nov. 19,” said Saad Al-Qahtani, media spokesman for the Health Affairs Department in Riyadh.

“Saud, a four-year-old boy, died midway between Riyadh and Shaqra while he was being rushed to the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh because there was no oxygen in both the main and support cylinders in the ambulance.”

Saud’s bereaved father told Al-Watan that the death came as a second shock for his family after his daughter Ajaeb died not too long ago.

“While the daughter died of some lymphatic cell problem, Saud died of negligence on the part of the hospital officials responsible for filling the oxygen cylinder,” he said.

He added that a doctor had earlier told him to take the boy to hospital whenever he had any illness because his immunity system was weak. “That is why I took the child to the Shaqra Hospital though he was only suffering from common cold. However, his condition worsened and we decided to take him to the Riyadh hospital. But on the way to Riyadh, at Haraimala the oxygen supply stopped and the child died. The doctors at a hospital in Haraimala tried to revive him but failed,” the father said.

The family is taking its complaint of medical malpractice to the Riyadh governor and the Human Rights Commission, and is asking officials to investigate the person responsible for the faulty equipment and the consequent death.

“The boy’s breathing and heartbeat had stopped when he was brought to us at 8 a.m. on Nov. 19. Doctors tried to revive him. The heartbeat was revived temporarily after applying cardiac massage but again relapsed as his system refused to react to the artificial respiration or any other treatment. He died at 10:15 a.m.,” a source at the Haraimala hospital said.

Meanwhile, the official responsible for ambulance service at the Shaqra Hospital said in an Internet posting that he was in no way responsible for the death of the child as the ambulance was taken out without his knowledge though he was present at the hospital on that day.