An Abuja based engineer, Mr. Enoch Godson, has deplored alleged negligence exhibited by doctors and nurses at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Oyo State, which resulted in the death of his 24-year-old in-law, Oluwaseun Ezekiel, at the health facility.
Ezekiel, a fresh graduate of the University of Lagos, was awaiting mobilisation for her one-year compulsory National Youth Service Corps scheme, when she fell ill and later died at UCH while undergoing treatment.
But Godson has blamed the workers and the UCH management for the untimely death of his young in-law.
According to him, it all started in October 2017, when Ezekiel, who suddenly fell ill, visited the General Hospital in Ikorodu, Lagos, for treatment.
When her condition was not improving, she decided to go to a private hospital (Dosachris Hospital) in Odonla, Ikorodu, where she was treated and managed for some time.
Godson said, “In fact, she was referred by her Lagos doctor to LUTH or UCH, but after considering the better option, we drove down to Ibadan in the evening of March 16th. So, we rushed Oluwaseun into the emergency section at UCH around 12mdnight, which was already Saturday morning, the 17th because she had difficulty breathing well.
“According to the team of doctors that examined her in Lagos, they said they said her heart was too large and was failing slowly, such that she could not breathe properly. She also could not even stand by herself, let alone walk. While at the emergency department, we started calling for help, but it took 15 minutes to have a not-so-friendly doctor amble to the car we brought her in just to see whether or not the case was an emergency.
“Soon we were asked to pay for many things written on a list, including an oxygen tube, so that she could breathe. But on getting to the cashier, he told us in no uncertain terms that he would not attend to us until he finished his bowl of amala. We had to scream for help; then a senior nurse came and spoke some sense into the glutton, who reluctantly attended to us after he heard that the patient was dying.
The aggrieved in-law to the victim continued, “The nurses there were showing lackadaisical attitude to our patient; even the patients’ attendants in coloured uniforms were not attending to patients until you called them a billion times. Almost everyone there just seemed inappropriate for their respective jobs in such a toxic environment.
“Then again we overheard a nurse saying, ‘I hope these ones are here with much money, otherwise they should not even bother.’ Eventually, Oluwaseun was checked into the resuscitation unit and trust, that place reeked of death. A resuscitation centre that had only one functional heart monitor to serve four dying patients; no single defibrillator, stuffy as hell, very mean nurses; one of whom even threatened to check out any patient, whose relatives were not cooperating.
“There were two malfunctioning air conditioning systems, while every office there had working ones. It was generally a place prepared to make patients sweat their weak pulses out. We would have that glimmer of hope, when a team of slow walking doctors stroll in like demigods only to realise that they came to use the patients as guinea pigs, rather than care for them.”
And then, Godson said, the worst happened! He said, “I held Oluwaseun in her hands, watched her breathe her last breath, crying with pain all over her face; we screamed for help from a nurse sitting at the resuscitating unit. We, ourselves, had to rush out to get the doctors, when we cried and they didn’t respond.
“Some doctors managed to get to her, but they were rather concerned with quietening us than reviving Oluwaseun; they managed to give her a few chest compressions in a futile CPR attempts, chatting and laughing while at it, and then pronounced her dead, just like that.
“We had waited and waited for the cardiologist, who neither showed up nor called for her to be relocated to the cardiology unit until she gave up at 7.20pm on the 17th March, 2018. Even the morticians at the morgue demanded all sorts of outrageous fees from us just to get the remains ready for burial, without caring that we were just bereaved.
“It is just painful, having lost a dear one so cheaply in a place that we erroneously believed to be safe. Oluwaseun, who was a fresh graduate of the University of Lagos and due for NYSC deployment in few weeks’ time, was a victim of inept doctors and failed health policies. I want the relevant authorities to amend and enforce standard operating procedures for health facilities in the country.”
But in his reaction to claims by Ezekiel’s in-law, the Head, Information Department at the UCH, Mr. Ayodeji Bobade, said that the relations of the deceased were not in a position to describe the circumstances that surrounded the death of the young lady at the hospital as medical negligence.
Bobade, however, assured that the UCH management would investigate the matter.
“The people who brought the deceased are not medical people. So, I don’t know what they mean by negligence of duty. How do you define negligence? As we speak, I will request a report from the Head of Emergency Department so that I will know how to respond to this issue. But I am sure I will get back to you as soon as I get necessary information,” he said.
