Family is desperate to save woman who has cancer but no insurance

A Syrian woman whose residency visa has expired needs treatment, but her Egyptian husband is not permitted to sponsor her.

Siham Mahmoud, from Syria, is suffering from cancer. She needs someone to sponsor her so that she can get treatment. Her son and husband are always with her at the hospital. Irene Garcia Leon / The NaShow more

ABU DHABI // A young woman critically ill with cancer is trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare that may cost her life.

Siham Al Mahmoud, 31, is being treated in a hospital that has no cancer facilities. She cannot move to one that does because she lost her job and has no health insurance. And her husband’s salary is too low for him to sponsor her residency visa and obtain insurance.

Now Mrs Al Mahmoud’s husband, Rabie Al Sayed, 35, is afraid to leave his wife’s bedside at Al Noor Hospital in Abu Dhabi, where she has been for more than two months. He fears that if he does he will receive a call to say his wife of six years has passed away.

“I am watching my wife die in front of my eyes and there is nothing I can do about it,” he said.

“I’ve gone everywhere and begged officials to have some compassion but no one has agreed to help.

“I’ve gone to immigration and begged them that I be allowed to sponsor her.”

“I even got an Emirati friend of mine who was willing to sponsor my wife just until I treat her, but this was rejected too,” Mr Al Sayed said.

He was told that only a company or a local charity could sponsor his wife.

“What shall I do?” he said. “Am I just to wait and watch her die?

“Can’t a charity organisation or anyone sponsor her, or even I be allowed to sponsor her just until she is treated? Then they can cancel her sponsorship and we will go wherever they want us to go.

“Just please don’t let her die.”

The couple’s little boy, Ismail, 3, has no idea of his mother’s plight.

“I don’t want my son to grow up without his mother,” Mr Al Sayed said. “Who will help me raise him?”

Mrs Al Mahmoud is from Syria and her extended family live in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. She is a hairdresser, but lost her job and with it her health insurance.

Her husband, from Egypt, is a farm worker, and does not qualify to sponsor her. He cannot take her to his home country because the Egyptian embassy will not issue visas to Syrians.

“We are stuck here,” he said. “If I could, I would take her back to Egypt for treatment. But the situation in both countries is terrible.”

Mrs Al Mahmoud’s cancer was diagnosed three months ago when she had a growth removed from her neck. She now has tubes attached to her lungs to drain the fluid that accumulates there.

“I couldn’t breathe or move and I still can’t,” she said. “The water in my lungs never stops and I feel like I am suffocating.

“I want to get better but there is nothing I can do.”

Al Noor Hospital’s Airport Road branch, where Mrs Al Mahmoud is receiving treatment, is providing painkillers and doctors continue to drain her lungs, but the hospital has no specialist oncology department.

Dr Shaker Fares, a thoracic surgeon at Al Noor, said they had done all they could.

“She needs to be moved to a government hospital immediately where the means are available for more tests and treatment. She has Stage IV cancer and her situation is critical.

“We can say that it is in the chest and at its latest stages, but more lab work is required to specify exactly where the tumour has spread to.”

He said the family did not have the financial means for additional tests and lab work.

“We have done all we can and have treated her in our hospital without burdening them with costs, but we are, after all, a private hospital and there is only so much we can do.

“Mrs Al Mahmoud should have been moved weeks ago to a government hospital where the equipment and laboratory is available for her treatment.”