In a heart-wrenching tale of medical negligence, a Malawi woman’s life has been forever altered by a botched surgery that has left her unable to enjoy intimacy, stripping her of a fundamental aspect of her womanhood. The High Court has awarded her K70 million in compensation.
The woman, Rhoda Chigaru, now in her 50s, underwent multiple surgeries at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) between 2017 and 2020, but the procedures only worsened her condition.
The court found that the defendant, Dr. Samuel Meja, was negligent in handling Chigarau’s situation, conducting erroneous tests, misdiagnosis, and uninformed surgery that resulted in her vagina being mutilated.
“Her vagina was mutilated when she was just graduating from her 30s to welcome her early 40s in and or about 2017 through 2020. Do they not say that—life begins at 40? Of course, that is what they say. Whatever that means—we have never been 40—perhaps we may hardly understand the extent of her excruciating pain,” Judge Elijah Blackboard Dazilikwiza Pachalo Daniels said in his ruling.
The court described the claimant’s ordeal as “excruciating” and “traumatic,” noting that the claimant’s pain and suffering were evident in her witness statement. “Clearly, the claimant’s painful lamentations at paragraph C(i) of her witness statement says it all: ‘I no longer have a vagina and can therefore never have or enjoy sexual intercourse ever again’,” the judge added.
In his ruling, Judge Dazilikwiza Pachalo Daniels awarded the claimant K70 million in damages, comprising general damages for pain and suffering, special damages, exemplary damages, and damages for loss of expectation of life and companionship.
“Unfortunately, there is not a thing we can do to bring her back to the position she would have been, but as far as money can do it—ours is simply to compensate her although not with any claim of mathematical precision as earlier stated,” he added.
