Dubai: Nanyonjo Specioza, a Ugandan expatriate, gave birth to an underweight baby girl in an emergency operation and is left with a huge hospital bill that she cannot pay.
She is desperately seeking help and hopes that someone can pay the massive bill that has climbed up to more than Dh83,000, which includes the incubator charges for the premature baby.
The series of unfortunate medical events started when Specioza went to her doctor for a prenatal check-up before going to her home country. The doctor found her blood pressure was abnormally high and advised her to check into a government hospital.
The doctor at Dubai Hospital took one look at her BP readings of 210/95 (hypertension stage 1) and advised her not to travel to her home country, where the expatriate was planning to travel for the delivery.
She was advised to check in immediately on a “life-saving emergency” and when she told the doctors that she did not have money to pay for the delivery, she was given medication to lower her BP.
But that did not help and her BP did not stabilise. “I was suffering from bad headaches,” she said. The doctor told her that her condition was serious and she could end up having convulsions.
The doctor advised her to undergo a Caesarean and on March 28 a baby girl was born to the expatriate. “Her weight was 1.25 kilos,” said Specioza. The bill for the delivery and her four-day stay at the hospital came to Dh20,000 and her friends rallied around and collected money to pay the charges.
However, the baby girl, who has been named Joan, spent 10 days in the incubator. “Each day my girl was in the incubator I was charged Dh2,200,” she said. Joan was kept in the incubator for 15 days to stabilise her condition.
The Dubai Hospital administration advised her to contact charity organisations to help her out of her predicament, but Specioza was unsuccessful in her attempts to get assistance.
Specioza approached a friend for help in desperation as the bill was mounting by the day. Her friend deposited two cheques covering the amount and the expatriate could take her baby home.
The expatriate said her friend does not have the money in the bank to cover the cheques when they are encashed.
“I just want to go home [to Uganda]. I need help,” she appealed. The air ticket she had bought to go home for the delivery has expired.
Dubai Hospital did not respond immediately to Gulf News but doctors in other hospitals said there is a huge demand for incubators as the number of premature births is growing.
A Dubai Health Authority (DHA) report says that Dubai will need at least 100 more incubators to meet the demand.
In Dubai Hospital alone, at least 400 babies every year are kept in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after birth for observation and treatment. The babies cannot breathe on their own and are kept in incubators and need special pumps attached to help them breathe.
