“It was like we paid them to kill him”

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OrijoReporter.com, Yusuf Abidoye
Late Yusuf Abidoye

The demise of Yusuf Abidoye, a 500-level Pharmacy Student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, has cast a shadow over one of his course mates, and friends, Oluwasanya Akanmu, who put the blame of his sudden death four days after he fell sick at the door step of the on-going Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) strike and the Seventh Day Adventist Church Hospital in the state.

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Oluwasanya gave a blow-by-blow account of Yusuf’s sad demise in an interview with The Nation in which the ugly emergency management and misdiagnosis by the country’s hospitals was brought to fore.

The distraught friend in his narrative, said Late Yususf had complained of abdominal pain and diarrhea, and was rushed to the institution’s health centre where he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B and referred to OAU Teaching Hospital (OAUTH).

At OAUTH, they were asked to take him to Seventh Day Adventist Hospital because of the ongoing JOHESU strike.

Quoting Oluwasanya and the publication, “By the time we got to Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, his condition had deteriorated. There was a crowd of patients in the wards, ostensibly because of the JOHESU strike. When he was admitted, his National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card was rejected. So, we had to pay an emergency bill of N2,000 and buy medical consumables that would make them treat him.

“On getting to where to make the payment, there was a long queue and it took more than 30 minutes to reach my turn. To my surprise, the consumables were estimated to cost N5,210, which was more than what we expected. We bought the materials.

“When medical infusion was being done on him, a doctor asked us to go run 10 medical tests, which cost N15,060. At this time, we needed to wait for his father, who was already coming from Ibadan. At this time, Yusuf was already in tears. There was no doctor to attend to him. I looked around to plead with the doctors on ground. It was that time I was told another test had to be carried out first before a doctor would be able to attend to him. That sounded ridiculous to me because no doctor took time to check the medical profile and letters sent by his doctors in OAUTH.”

When the late Yusuf’s father arrived in the hospital, he paid for the test whose result would be ready hours later.

Speaking further: “When the result came, we discovered his Premature Ventricular Contraction (PCV) was nine per cent and his white blood cell count was about 48,000+, which was extremely high and indicated an infection. The doctor said he needed three pints of blood.

“Two pints of blood were bought from a man whom the hospital referred to as a ‘commercial donor’. The late Yusuf’s father paid N10,000 for the blood and N12,000 to screen the blood samples. At the point of presenting the blood sample for transfusion, CAMPUSLIFE gathered that the doctor who was to administer the blood left and asked a young doctor on internship to do it.

Oluwasanya said: “We stayed with Yusuf throughout the night while his dad left for his sister’s place to prepare for the next day. The late Yusuf woke up the following morning and his condition was stable. We talked and cracked a joke. Then, he ate. Thirty minutes later, the abdominal pain returned and he vomited all he ate.

“I waited until his father came around 8am before I returned to school. But, our other friend, Gafar, was there till around 10:30am when no doctor had arrived. I was told doctors came in the evening. When they reviewed his case, they moved him to another ward and asked for two pints of blood. He was half asleep and only spoke briefly by the time I left the hospital. I didn’t know it was the last time I would talk to him. I was told he was on oxygen.

“Gafar called me the next morning and told me our friend had died. I rushed to Seventh Day Adventist Hospital and I saw his father in tears. While clearance was being done, the hospital still forced the family to pay N69,000 before the body was released. To me, it was like we paid them to kill him.”

This story was originally published by The Nation

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