A 33-year-old father of one, Ayobanji Shonuga, has narrated how her 30-year-old wife, Omowumi Shonuga, reportedly died during child birth on Thursday in Lagos due to the hospital’s negligence.
According to reports, pregnant Omowumi had at about 5 a.m, called her husband’s attention when she got into child labour pain. He was said to have driven her to the Rauf Aregbesola Health Centre in Egbeda, Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos, only to meet the hospital gates locked on their arrival, Punch reports.
Shonuga said, “We got to the hospital around 5 am to meet the hospital gates locked. I called out for their attention and nobody came out. After a while a woman came out and said there was no doctor to attend to me, that I should take my wife to the Igando General Hospital.
“I said it was impossible for a doctor not to be on duty in a hospital as big as this. She ignored any other enquiry I was trying to make.”
Shonuga said as he got back to his car, his wife had delivered the baby and that she was in a pool of blood.
“On seeing my wife in the pool of her own blood, I started shouting, blood! blood! baby’ and two nurses rushed out from the hospital,” Shonuga added.
“After they opened the gate, I drove in. One of the attendants picked the baby, but the nurses refused to touch my wife. I asked for a stretcher to take her in, they said they didn’t have. I asked for an ambulance to take her away from there, they said they were not with the keys.
“I had to carry her upstairs with no help from them because they didn’t want to touch her. They said there was no doctor to attend to her,” he lamented.
“After much persuasion, the nurses told me to go and buy some injections and drugs that would stop the bleeding while they began stitching a cut my wife had.
“She was shouting that the pain was too much while they were stitching her but they kept telling her to keep quiet. I knew something was wrong and told them to get a doctor. They said he was on his way,” he added.
Shonuga said that in spite of the stitches, Omowunmi did not stop bleeding and the doctor who came in while they were cleaning her up said they should take her to the Igando General Hospital as her case was too critical for them to handle.
“He looked at her eyeballs and said that she had lost a lot of blood and would need to be transfused but they could not do that at that moment.
“I asked again for the ambulance so I could take her to Igando. They said they didn’t have the keys yet. It was just packed there doing nothing. It was then I asked after my baby. They kept quiet. Later, someone went out to check the room the baby was supposed to be and said the baby was no longer breathing.
“It was obvious that they abandoned the baby. I went in to carry my wife with the drip on her but insisted that they must give me a referral note and a nurse to go with me to Igando so that her case could be treated as an emergency.
“They refused until their supervisor instructed them to go with me when she heard me shouting. It took another 25 minutes before they came with a note and one of the members of staff went with me,” Shonuga grieved.
“When we got there, they said there was no bed space, so my wife was rejected.
“No bed space, please go to another hospital,” Shonuga quoted the nurses at the Igando General Hospital.
“For another 45 minutes, we couldn’t get a bed. After I created a scene that attracted some attention, they began running up and down and said they had created a bed space for her.
“They took her blood sample and insisted that they wouldn’t transfuse her till I had paid N20, 000. We argued again that it was an emergency that they should go ahead but at this stage she was already losing consciousness. While they were trying to secure a drip for her, she died.
“I buried my late wife and newborn baby later that day,” the widower left with a three-year-old baby girl to cater for, sobbed.
“The most painful thing for me is that she suffered so much before she died. She cried and bled on and on, but that did not even move them. There was no doctor on duty and they could not give me an ambulance to handle her case.
“I only took her there because that was where she had her antenatal and they knew her and her health history. If I had known I would have taken her to a private hospital,” Shonuga added.
Consequently, the Medical Officer, Alimosho Local Government Area, LGA, Dr. Micheal Ariyibi, who was contacted, said that the Ministry of Health had received a complaint and had begun an investigation into the case.
The officer said, “The report is with the Ministry of Health already and we are trying to investigate who and who were involved.
“I’m assuring you that they will not go unpunished. The ministry would not hesitate to punish those involved in the unfortunate incident.”
In the same vein, the Director of Information at the LGA, Mrs. Deola Salako, reacting to the incident, said an investigative panel had been sent to the health centres involved.
“Anyone found to have contributed to the deaths would be sanctioned,” Salako said.
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