Lawyer threatens to sue clinic after child vaccinated despite objections
Mother-of-ten and lawyer Asiah Abdul Jalil has threatened legal action against a medical staff from the Balok Health Clinic who had earlier today administered her 13-year-old son with his second Covid-19 vaccine dose.
She said the shot was given despite her formal objections against further Covid-19 vaccinations for all her children, recorded in a police report that named both Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin and Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, as well as a letter dated Jan 9 to the Health Ministry, Pahang Health Department and Kuantan Health Office.
Asiah, through a formal letter from her legal firm, demanded the clinic's administrators to reveal the name of the staff in charge of administering the vaccine to her fifth child.
She also shared the letter on her Facebook.
"I will file a suit against the staff of Balok Health Clinic who had administered the Covid-19 vaccine to my son.
"The suit will be filed as soon as I obtain the staff's name who administered the shot. They must be named as the tortfeasor," she told Malaysiakini.
According to her letter, Asiah said she reserved her right to initiate pre-action for a discovery order from the courts if her request for the identity of the medical staff in charge was denied.
Additionally, Asiah also named her husband Mohd Hatta Saadon, Pahang health director Dr Bahari Che Awang Ngah, Khairy and Noor Hisham as possible defendants in her planned suit.
'One-sided consent'
On the incident, Asiah said her husband had taken their son to the Balok Health Clinic at 8.30am today for his second vaccine dose.
"In the event that you (medical staff) were presented with a consent form completed by my husband and father of my children, I would like to stress that it is one-sided and does not represent my consent as their mother," she said.
Asiah's four eldest children aged 19, 17, 16 and 14 have completed two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine and would be eligible for a booster, while her fifth child, aged 13, at the time was waiting for his second dose.
Asiah's sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth children are aged 11, nine, seven and five, while her youngest son is two years old.
She lodged her initial police report on Jan 7 in relation to the government's announcement on future Covid-19 vaccinations for children amid fresh concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant.
On Jan 6, Noor Hisham said the Drug Control Authority (DCA) had granted conditional approval for a low-concentration version of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11.
The formulation uses 10 microgrammes of the vaccine active ingredient per dose, compared to the 30 microgrammes per dose previously approved for those aged 12 and above.
