10-Month-Old Admitted To ICU Following Hot Water Enema, Nurse Suspended

An infant in Kazakhstan was left fighting for his life after a nurse allegedly gave him an enema using scalding hot water.

The incident reportedly occurred last week after 10-month-old Nurislam was admitted in the Shymkent Infectious Disease Hospital in southern Kazakhstan for an acute respiratory infection. The baby was kept in the hospital for three days during which he received treatment for his condition. While the doctors were able to treat him successfully, it left him constipated. As a result, he was prescribed an enema, which is the injection of fluid into the lower bowel by way of the rectum – a procedure to relieve extreme constipation.

The baby’s mother said as soon as the nurse began the process of giving her son an enema, he started crying in pain. Realizing the nurse was using very hot water to carry out the procedure, the mother said she tried to intervene. But the nurse refused to listen, telling the mother that she “knew better," the Sun reported.

When the procedure was done, the mother went to check on her distressed son and realized that his lower back was severely burned.

“I saw that the skin on my son’s bottom was badly burned,” she said, Mirror Online reported. “His right buttock was covered with horrible giant blisters. I cannot convey the horror that I experienced when I saw it. I stormed into the office of our doctor shouting that they had burned my son.”

He was rushed to the intensive care unit Thursday in a critical condition. "Doctors do not say much and we do not know what future holds for our son. Since then he has been living on painkillers. All I know is that his condition is very grave. He is crying in pain and bleeding every time he needs to poo,” the infant’s father said.

After the parents alerted the police of the incident, the nurse who allegedly gave the child the hot water enema was suspended. Amangeldy Nurlybaev, the head doctor of the hospital, said a commission, which included some of the facility’s top managers, was created and it will carry out an internal investigation into the matter. The police were yet to comment on the incident.

Meanwhile, the parents have reached out to Kazakhstan Healthcare Minister Yelzhan Birtanov, imploring him to intervene and help provide the best medical care for their son.

In another case in Russia, a newborn had to endure pain for three months after a nurse reportedly forgot to remove the surgical wipes that she had inserted into the baby to stop post-natal bleeding. Two months after the baby started experiencing pain while urinating and getting frequent mood swings, her mother discovered the end of an antiseptic wipe peeping out. She was taken to a gynecologist who diagnosed her with severe inflammation of the genital area, Mirror Online reported.

Although one wipe was removed from her body, the pain persisted. In the following month, two more similar wipes were removed from her body.