As Desola gasped for breath on my lap on that fateful day, February 18, 2015, 32 days to our 31st wedding anniversary, I was frightened and lost in thought. Who would not be? I was lost in thought that a wonderful lady and dutiful wife who had put in all what she had into our marriage and raising of her children could end up with an avoidable death while I watched helplessly.
With our car parked in front of the Emergency Unit of the Federal Medical Centre, Yaba, I still nursed a rather forlorn hope that she would live. But after 45 minutes without any attendance from the nurses and other medical staff, it was clear that our health system had failed another of its beneficiaries. From the attitude of the health staff, you discover that the facility has nothing near an emergency. This is even when patients had referrals from hospitals to save life.
For Desola, my wife, confidant, and mother of my children, with whom I shared the same bed for 31 years, it was a needless death that came by 3pm after six hours in the hospital without any treatment in spite of the emergency, which her case deserves. What the four of us who accompanied Desola had was disdain, callousness, and inhuman treatment meted out by a dysfunctional healthcare system that needs urgent reformation by the government, medical profession, and public, which tax is used to sustain the system.
On the fateful day, armed with a referral from a private hospital, we arrived at the medical emergency unit of the Lagos State University Hospital by 8:25am on February 18 for urgent attention. Though our team was received with open arms by the attendants and got a patient’s card procured early enough to commence treatment, that was not to be as the procedure immediately went into slow motion.
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It was a back and forth process as hospital staff in their usual lackadaisical manner refused to offer a first aid treatment before the real treatment process kicked off. However, after an endless waiting, for over three hours, what we got was the usual excuse of lack of bed space. The medical emergency unit of the teaching hospital displayed their infamous notoriety for failing in their first calling: Offering relief to a patient on the throes of death.
As yours truly wandered aimlessly on the premises of the sprawling health centre, my wife was left crawling up in a corner of the car which brought us. Later, she lost her capacity to talk. Neither could she move her limbs long after FBS and BP were taken without any administration. It is curious that for the hospital staff who obviously are more in number than the patients on admission, minutes turned into hours with no solution.
When the solution came, it was a referral to another emergency unit of any of the several Federal Government hospitals. The anxiety and desperation of Remi, my dear friend and colleague, who drove cautiously in the Ikeja traffic, was boldly written in the eyes of the three of us who watched helplessly as Desola sought for help but got none in her dangerous state.
The hope which we had on getting reprieve at the Nigerian Air Force Medical Centre in Lagos was equally dashed as the personnel, though initially displayed eagerness to help, turned cold as a referral was given based on lack of capacity to treat a dying patient. Yet the place is a designated centre of emergency medical treatment open not only to the military, but also civilians alike.
Isn’t it curious that the LASUTH had earlier rejected Desola for lack of bed space and later called our team back. But our hope turned sour 30 minutes later when the Chief Medical Consultant was reported as having ordered for referral to be given to all emergency patients based on an attempt to reject “orders from above” to favour privileged patients.
With a forlorn hope, we headed for Federal Medical Centre in the scorching Lagos sun. If the medical staff at LASUTH and NAF Base, Ikeja were lackadaisical, those of FMC in Yaba were snobbish, contemptuous, and grossly inhuman.
Nobody attended to us for the first 40 minutes in spite of the emergency nature. By the time we got attention, alas it was too late for Desola, having endured seven hours of stress inside the car without any attempt at first aid to stabilise her state.
It was not Desola alone that I lost through the negligence of our health workers. In August 2021, my friend and classmate, Toyin Abayomi, 62, suffered the same fate. With a referral from a private hospital in Ijoko, Ogun State, Toyin was taken to the Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta. The car which took him and family took off by 11am and got to Abeokuta by 1pm or thereabout. For three hours, he was left wriggling in pain by the hospital and by 4pm his family was given a referral to the General Hospital, Ifo. This was a period of waiting amidst excruciating pain.
However, it took three hours for the family to meander the car to Ifo with the traffic gridlock caused primarily by the dilapidated road. He was admitted and put on oxygen by the scanty medical staff, but that was not enough. He gave up the ghost after 30 minutes of administration of the oxygen.
In this case, bad roads, negligence and uncaring attitude of health workers combined to snuff life out of Toyin. His is just one of other numerous needless deaths caused by our inhuman health management and administration system.
In Nigeria, death is as cheap as cheap could be. Life taken in a pogrom is as much as those who died through absolute neglect and uncaring of health workers. Our health workers have obviously set aside their medical oath to save life and bring succour to families who share emotional stress of their loved ones for pecuniary gains and other unexplained motives.
From the usual excuse of being under pressure, the oath they took should at least imbue them with courage to go the extra mile to save lives.
Granted that God is the owner of life, He takes it when He will, Christ has also given us power to triumph over illness and other issues, which those who loved him trample under their feet.
Be that as it may, our health institutions deserve a turnaround in terms of the attitude and devotion of health workers to patients who turn to them for succour. While it is indisputable that governments at all levels have not invested so much in healthcare in the country for obvious reasons of misplaced priority, there is the need for a reorientation of the attitude of health workers and personnel.
No matter the level of investments in the health sector, lack of attitudinal change on the part of health workers will have little or no effect on our health care delivery system. Granted that brain drain has seriously affected the health sector through the depletion of the workforce, the same level of health workers work under strenuous conditions in their host countries. Inadequate qualified and specialist health personnel should not be a reason for avoidable deaths in our health institutions.
For me, in the death of Desola, my beloved, I take solace in 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 that death has been swallowed up in victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I also take solace in the fact that in her last moments, she held on firmly to the injunctions in John 11:25: I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet he shall live.”
Rest in peace in the bosom of your creator, my first love and mother of my beautiful children. Till we meet on resurrection day.
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