Agitation for a medicare revolution is afoot to keep medical personnel on their toes and prevent avoidable deaths in Nigerian hospitals, writes Senior Copy Editor, INNOCENT ANORUO.
In February 1997, a patient was fortunate to have survived perforated typhoid fever and burst appendix at the Ikeja General Hospital, now Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH).
Immediately the doctors finished surgery on him, there was power blackout. And there was no standby generator.
When a doctor was asked what would have been the fate of the patient if he was still in the theatre during the blackout, he answered: “It would have been his luck.” Meaning death. Then was when infrastructure was the problem.
That patient was yours truly.
When Babatunde Fashola became Lagos State governor, he changed the face of infrastructure in the public health sector, among other achievements. Before him, doctors seemed to be on holiday because of poor infrastructure and equipment.
In February 2016, Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH) was shut down for over a month because students protested the death of a colleague caused by the negligence of the attendants at the school’s health centre.
On April 23, some Lagosians, led by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Hope Alive Child Care Initiative (HACCI), in collaboration with the Medical Police, marched from the National Stadium, Surulere, to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, to protest the death of Ngozi Udebu.
She was discovered dead at LUTH on March 28.
After participating in the Good Friday procession with members of St. Dominic Catholic Church, Yaba, Ngozi complained of stomach ache, and her husband, Ausbeth, took her to LUTH.
He said with LUTH’s policy that no relative should stay with a patient overnight, another careless stunt led to the death of his wife before his visit the next morning.
Services at the hospital were interrupted, as dozens of mourners stormed the main gate to protest the alleged negligence that led to Ngozi’s death.
The protesters, who wore black T-shirts bearing the picture and name of the deceased, arrived the gate singing solidarity songs, brandishing different placards, and demanded to see the hospital’s management to register their protest.
Some of the placards read: “We Demand Change of Culture Towards Our Hospitals and Patients”, “Enough of Medical Negligence”, “Our Hospitals and Medical Personnel are Meant to Save Lives”, “LUTH, We Want Life Not Death”, “Are Our Hospitals Slaughter Houses?”
The gate was locked and manned by armed policemen, which prevented the protesters from entry. They were later addressed by an unidentified employee who claimed to speak on behalf of the management.
The man, who claimed to be the chief security officer of LUTH, said the management sent him to tell the protesters to bear with it as it had no prior knowledge of their visit, being on Saturday, a non-working day.
“I flew in from Abuja this morning to see what is happening here. I was sent to know if what we have been hearing is true or not. I am very sorry for what happened,” the man added.
HACCI Executive Director, Adaugo Nwalema, described the action of LUTH as insensitive, and said the protest was to show that Nigerians are fed up with medical negligence and government’s poor funding of health institutions.
Ausbeth insisted that his wife, a mother of four, was suffocated to death while undergoing treatment as a result of the negligence of the medical personnel.
But LUTH denied the allegation and set up a panel that investigated and absolved the personnel of blame.
LUTH said: “Ngozi Udebu was a patient in our hospital, having been admitted on March 26, 2016, and died about 51 hours later. She was afflicted with abdominal pain from her monthly menstrual periods shortly after 40 days of religious fasting.
“She had taken an overdose of Piroxicam (50mg thrice daily for two days), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain-killer, which is known to be associated with side effects of inflammation or ulceration of the stomach, even at a regular dose.
“She was admitted, seen by the medical team, including an experienced consultant physician.
“She was commenced on medications for peptic ulcers or dyspepsia after ultrasound scans and other tests. She was admitted to the medical wards within 24 hours of presentation and monitored by the medical personnel (doctors and nurses).
“A few hours to her demise, she started to have difficulty in breathing, and was commenced on oxygen therapy which she continued to have till her demise.
“While making the rounds to see how the patients fared in the night, the nurse on duty noticed the patient had stopped breathing, and attempts to resuscitate her failed.
“There was no distress call by the patient, other patients or any other person around her in the ward prior to her sudden death.
“In view of the strange and sudden death of our patient, the managing team immediately requested for an autopsy to unravel the immediate and remote causes of her demise as it’s the standard practice in such cases of unusual death.
“This autopsy was prompted by LUTH. The autopsy preliminary report demonstrated evidence of asphyxia, though no foreign body or evidence of strangulation was found.”
However, Ausbeth dismissed LUTH’s response, insisting that the report of the panel showed that his wife suffocated to death.
His words: “I didn’t expect anything less, because I know they would want to come out with something to exonerate them, but at the end I can see that they have answered the questions I even wanted to ask.
“They have been able to tell me that my wife died without them knowing at the point she died. It is clear to me that she suffocated to death, because there was nobody on the ground monitoring the oxygen they put on her.
“If you put a patient on oxygen somebody should be kept to monitor it to see the progress of the whole thing.
“When I came the next day and met the lifeless body of my wife, I confronted the nurse that was on night duty. The nurse brought out the oxygen and told me that they had to change the oxygen because they discovered that it was not working.
“I remember asking her, ‘at what point did you realise that the oxygen kit was no longer working’, but she was unable to give me an accurate answer.
“With this response, it was clear to me that they saw her dead when they were going for ward round.”
Ausbeth vowed to start a medical revolution in Nigeria.
“I have received up to 2,000 calls from people that have lost their loved ones at LUTH due to their staff’s negligence.
“Life does not mean anything to them; the consultants want people to come to their private hospitals to get good medical attention.
“The court is my last option. My option is to make enough noise in this country to start a medical revolution because we must change how things are done in hospitals.
“Medical science has got to a stage that whatever they are doing, patients’ relatives must be carried along. In some advanced countries, patients’ relatives are allowed in operating rooms to see what is happening.
“That they don’t have a camera to capture what happened in the wards is unacceptable in this modern age and only two nurses are attending to over 35 patients.”
