Patients Rights Support Foundation

Medical Negligence in Nigeria: when Hospitals kill, by Temitayo Olofinlua, Radiant Health magazine.

On October 9 2012 Lanre Amoo Onidundu was shot in the leg by daredevil armed robbers who attacked him as he stepped out of a bank in the Ilupeju Area of Lagos. They made away with 2.6 million naira that he had gone to cash for the organization he worked with. Fortunately some bystanders who had initially fled during the attack returned and rushed him to Gbagada Hospital. At the hospital he was told that there was no free bed so he was admitted to the bare floor of the emergency section of the said Government hospital. He lay for hours bleeding without receiving any treatment not even basic first aid. After some hours a Doctor finally examined him there in the emergency room.

The Doctor felt the area around the gunshot wound to see if there were any bullet fragments in the leg, he then gave him an injection to relieve his pain and lacking any proper dressing wrapped the wounded leg with brown carton paper. That was all. The bullet was eventually extracted which was lodged in his thigh slightly above the knee and sewed him up. The medical staff did not examine his injury with a C.T scan or imaging technology to verify the extent of the damage or what to fix. He remained at the hospital for days receiving no treatment other than the daily dressing of his gunshot wound. The condition of his leg deteriorated.

Finally 16 days after he was admitted that is, on the 25th October his relatives moved him to a private hospital in Abule- Egba in Lagos. Here a C.T scan confirmed that the bullet had pierced his right thigh just above the knee. It had also broken the thigh bone and severed the main femoral artery cutting off the blood supply to the lower part of the leg. The Doctors at the General hospital would have seen this had they ordered a C.T scan. But now it was too late. The blood supply to the lower part of the leg had been cut off for too long causing tissue death. The wound was also infected so the leg had to be amputated before the infection would spread to other parts of the body. That was how Lanre Amoo Onidundu lost that leg.

PRSF COMMENTS:
Our President (PRSF) had an encounter sometime last month in a hospital in Jos. He took a friend’s son who had an emergency: advanced pile (bleeding from a**s) to a private hospital (can’t mention the name here) there was only one Doctor on duty. They waited for over one hour and when medical attention was not forth coming he had to rush him to another hospital where he was promptly treated before something unpleasant would happen.
We observe as follows:
1. That many Health Care Centers (especially Government hospitals) are understaffed leading to the few Doctors on duty being overwhelmed by the large population of Patients.
2. Some Medical Personnel are not ‘patriotic’ to their calling and so are largely dissatisfied, accordingly they act with snail speed or indifference in face of emergencies. We recommend a change in attitude of our Medical Personnel.
3. Patients appear not to be taking sufficient steps to make medical personnel sit up and attend to their duties as they should.
4. Lanre Amoo Onidundu appears not have taken the matter up with a complaint to the medical authorities (Council inclusive) or court case, most Patients often do nothing.
5. Health Care Centers (especially Government hospitals) appear not to have efficient monitoring personnel in place to ensure that their staff are punctual, dedicated, smart, courteous e.t.c. We recommend this (Health Care Centers to have efficient monitoring personnel).
6. Most Patients or their handlers (relations, friends, or anyone who takes a sick/injured person to a health care center) seem to prefer to stay put in a health care center for an undue long time even when medical help in emergencies is not forth coming. We advice that they should learn to relocate to other hospitals on time (especially from Government to reputable private hospitals) if help in a particular health centre is delayed unnecessarily. Section 20 (1) of the National Health Act 2014 says that “a health provider, health worker or health establishment shall not refuse a person emergency treatment for any reason” but unfortunately does not give a time frame within which such a person must be attended to.