Police have arrested a medical doctor and a senior nurse in connection with the case of a woman reported to have lived with several surgical tools in her body.The prime suspect (name withheld), who works at Byumba Hospital, is the man who performed the cesarean delivery on Zawadi Murekatete, 20, a Congolese refugee in Gihembe camp in Gicumbi District, in 2008.“Investigations have since been ongoing and that’s why we have finally made arrests,” Police Spokesman Theos Badege told The New Times yesterday.“This is a big case that will require close cooperation between the investigators and medical council and possible a special team of doctors will have to be set up to assist in further investigations,” said Badege. Murekatete’s life was saved by medics in January this year after doctors at Kigali Teaching Hospital (CHUK) carried out an operation and found surgical tools, including three gloves, a syringe and cotton, from her virginal cavity, four years after the C-section.Also arrested is a CHUK medic accused of trying to cover up the case by destroying evidence.Police alleges that investigations unearthed more similar cases in which the prime suspect is implicated.“Some of the victims have either died or suffered permanent impairments,” Badege said, adding that some victims have petitioned civil courts.However, speaking from Kicukiro Police Station, the medic denied responsibility though he accepts he operated on Murekatete.“I remember she came to the hospital in 2008, she was pregnant but too young to give birth normally, we had to perform a cesarean. She later got an infection which we treated,” he recalled.The doctor insisted that there was no way such external items could be left into a person’s body.He dismissed other cases linked to him by Police.While the senior nurse admits throwing away the items ‘innocently’ as she was cleaning the theatre.Commenting on the arrests, the Director-General of Rwanda’s Health Communications Centre, Arthur Asiimwe said, following the arrest, the Ministry of Health has asked the Medical Council to set up an adhoc committee made up of doctors to undertake a peer evaluation of the case.” How it unfoldedMurekatete explained in an earlier after feeling her labour pains was rushed to the camp’s health centre from where she was immediately transferred to Byumba Hospital for a cesarean section.She said that she underwent the operation and gave birth to a healthy child.But when she left the theatre, her stomach started swelling immediately with a lot of pain. The following day, she went to the toilet, the stitches came loose and her stomach slit open.She was rushed to the theatre where she was re-stitched but her stomach kept swelling and she had to undergo another operation on April 5 last year.Murekatete lived in pain for three years until January 5, 2012, when a piece of cotton dropped out of her private parts as she was urinating.
