Desola Abatan: Missing Humanity In Our Healthcare
As she gasped for breath on my lap on that fateful day, Feb 18,2015, 32 days to our 31 wedding anniversary, I was frightened and lost in thought.
Who would not.
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.
Even as our car parked in front of the Emergency Unit of the Federal Medical Centre, Yaba ,I still nursed a rather forlorn hope that Desola 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 to emergency .
This is even when patients had referral 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 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 health care systems that needs urgent reformation both by government, the medical profession and the public which tax is used to sustain the system.
On the fateful date armed with a referral from a private hospital, we arrived at the medical emergency unit of the Lagos State University Hospital, LASUTH, by 8.25 am on Tuesday February 18 for an urgent attention.
Though our team was received with open arms by the attendants and got patient card procured early enough to commence treatment, that was not to be as the procedure immediately went into slow motion.
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 in the premises of the sprawling health centre, my wife was left crawled 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 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 Airforce 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 who had earlier rejected Desola for lack of bed space later called our team back.
But our hope turned sour thirty minutes after when the chief medical consultant was reported as having ordered for referral to be given to all emergency patients based on 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 Airforce base were lackadaisical, that of Yaba FMC were snobbish, contemptuous and grossly inhuman
