Following the circumstances surrounding my wife’s death on July 9, 2021, Health Commissioner in Lagos State, Professor Akin Abayomi, I was informed, ordered an immediate investigation into the matter. I am most grateful to him. The laudable step reduced the pain in the heart. It is the most potent balm of the moment.
A female official (name withheld) from the Health Ministry spoke with me twice in two days. She assured me that whatever information was gathered would assist the Ministry to make things work better in Lagos hospitals. That’s gratifying! It is all I want. My wife wouldn’t ask for more. She wouldn’t want anyone sanctioned for her sake.
However, without prejudice to the investigation and without preempting its outcome, I am persuaded that my opinion in the matter counts. I narrated to the official of the Health Ministry only what happened when my wife was sick; not my deductions from the experience. Five public hospitals owned by both the Federal Government and the Lagos State Government were connected – Alimosho General Hospital, Igando; Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Ikeja; Federal Medical Centre, FMC, Ebute Metta; Military Hospital, Yaba; and Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi-Araba. Here are my observations:
1. GENERAL HOSPITAL, IGANDO: This hospital has an obnoxious rule which must be abolished. On July 6, 2021, I had taken my wife to the hospital in company of my son and my elder brother. We had travelled and so, we arrived in the hospital late – about 11pm – because it rained heavily and traffic was much. We were tired and my wife was the most tired because she was sick. The moment I mentioned to the doctor on duty that my wife had bed sore and was weak, he refused to admit her, assuming that my wife was diabetic. That nonsense! He told us that it was a rule in the hospital not to admit any patient with a wound. A public hospital! We challenged the obnoxious rule angrily but another doctor came to deny it, indirectly. They suggested we go to Isolo General Hospital or FMC, Ebute Metta, as Igando lacked an expert to treat the assumed diabetes. We had to go to a private hospital that night. We got there about 1 am. My wife’s sickness had nothing to do with diabetes.
2. LASUTH: LASUTH should be more caring. Getting to the Emergency Unit of the hospital on July 9, 2021, I expected that my wife would be attended to first before asking me to go and pay for card. Not so! It was card first! I paid N500 for card and waited for her to be moved to the ward. ‘No space’ was what I heard from the doctor without blinking. The unit knew that there was no space, yet they wasted my time going to the card section when my wife lay helpless in the car. Looking at the distance between LASUTH and FMC, Ebute Metta, I asked the doctor how I could sustain my wife to reach FMC. Indifferently, he told me to buy drugs at the chemist and give her on the way. Such callousness! How do I give drugs to a patient in coma who had been on oxygen?
When we were leaving, he withheld the original referral note I had brought from the private hospital and wrote a scanty one for me. Possibly he did that in error. That gave me problem at FMC and Military Hospital. Doctors there didn’t see what was wrong with my wife in the new note. They kept asking for the original referral note. The LASUTH doctor ought to attach the comprehensive one which I took there to the new one he wrote.
3. FMC: The hospital was okay. They were quick and humane. They didn’t ask me to register first. The FG should provide more space for them, especially in the Emergency Section.
4. MILITARY HOSPITAL: The doctor I met in the hospital responded promptly but the hospital lacked ICU. I wonder how a military hospital doesn’t have an ICU. The FG should provide ICU there, urgently, to save people’s lives.
5. LUTH: LUTH too did well by quickly coming out to examine my wife first without demanding a Registration Card. But why should the doctor say that it was against the ethic of her profession to treat a patient in the car when there was no space in the ward? I suppose medical ethic is meant to save lives and not fashioned after pretentious Pharisees’ laws! The doctor must be glad that my wife finally passed on. Her medical ethic was protected after all!
If I may ask, who owns that alternative accommodation called Spill Over Building in LUTH? The building is adjacent to the Emergency Unit building and should belong to the FG. Why is it contracted out to a private organisation? The building spins blood money. LUTH should take it back for the people.
6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: Many emergency cases in Nigerian hospitals at the moment are a direct journey to heaven. There should be a way to attend to emergency patients even when there is no space in the ward. Nevertheless, the government should make it an urgent point of duty to build more facilities in the hospitals.
Many doctors work under undue pressure and are frustrated; the government should pay attention to their demands. They are overworked; I noticed that. I could understand the reason some of them have lost their humanity; they carry the mentality of mortuary attendants who care less whether someone dies or lives. I met about a score doctors during my wife’s last moments; only five of them were human beings. The government can help the system by treating doctors well and employing more of them.
- Omojuyigbe is a lecturer at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Ogba, Lagos.