Saudi newborn missing from hospital for 25 years

Saudi couple Mazi and Ateeqa al-Jahdali have spent the past 25 years living out every parents' nightmare.

In what appears to be a shocking example of hospital negligence, their baby, born premature and left in a Mecca hospital to receive further treatment, simply vanished into thin air.

Mazi was told that his son was transferred from Jerool Hospital, where he was born, to the more specialist Nour Hospital for more tests – but that was the last certain piece of information that the family received.

Since then Mazi has gone from hospital to hospital searching in a desperate hunt for any leads on his son's fate, but has received nothing apart from conflicting reports, some saying that his son had died, and some saying that they simply had no information.

Mazi sometimes even blames himself.

“I agreed to let him stay in the hospital with my own hands, it is as if I am also responsible for the disappearance of my pride and joy, whose circumstances, to this day, I do not know,” he told the Saudi newspaper Mecca.

Ateeqa, meanwhile, remains hopeful, and says that she still believes her child is alive.

The official response appears limited so far.

While expressing sympathy, the General Manager of the Directorate of Health Affairs in Mecca, Dr Mustafa Baljoun, said that he could only attempt to pursue the case with other official bodies, should his own department not be able to find out what happened to Mazi and Ateeqa's child.

In the meantime, the couple hold the one link they still have with their son who disappeared so long ago, his initial birth certificate – proof that their missing boy once existed.