A 37-year-old Alex Ofehe, a lawyer, who was operated upon by surgeon at the Federal Staff Hospital in Jabi, Abuja on October 23, has died
A few days after the surgeries, he suffered
severe pains and developed swellings on the stomach to the extent that he
started passing blood as urine and stool.
Ofehe was taken back into the theatre on October 30 to clean the wounds of previous surgeries.
But rather than do that, his family members
alleged that the hospital repeated the same surgical procedures on his
intestines in a “suspicious” circumstances.
The surgery was said to be successful because it
was performed by the three most experienced consultant surgeons in Abuja,
including one from the National Hospital.
But after the surgeries, the doctors at FSH were
said to have requested for blood with which to resuscitate the patient.
Ironically, Ofehe’s case worsened four hours
after the blood transfusion. He was consequently referred to the National
Hospital.
It was gathered that the National
Hospital refused to admit the lawyer two and half hours after he was brought and
he eventually died inside the FSH ambulance that took him there.
The managements of FSH and National Hospital are
now trading blames over the lawyer’s death.
Ofehe was buried in his home town, Oghara-Iyede
in Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State on November 24.
The family, in a letter by their lawyer, Mr.
Anthony Ejumejowo, to the Medical Director of FSH, Dr. C.I. Igwilo, accused the
hospital of negligence.
A similar letter was sent to the Medical Director
of National Hospital and the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyewuchi Chukwu, calling
for investigation of the incident.
In the letter to FSH, Ejumejowo said, “Our client strongly suspects that there was a deliberate attempt to cover up the negligence
of the surgeons and knowing that the deceased had no chance of surviving, sent
the deceased to die outside your hospital deliberately.
“We hereby demand an explanation and
compreh ensive report of everything that transpired between the period that the
deceased was admitted and the period that he died under the care of your
hospital.”
The Medical Director of FSH, Igwilo, in her
letter dated November 7 admitted that “the deceased was noticed to have
developed some complications that necessitated a second surgery.”
According to him, Ofehe suddenly started bleeding
from the stomach and was passing altered blood in his stool and was vomiting
profusely on the evening of the next day after he had been adjudged by clinical
and laboratory parameters to have improved.
Igwilo said in view of the severity of the
bleeding, Ofehe was transfused with four pints of blood and was on the fifth one
when he was moved to the National Hospital due to the blood loss, massive
transfusions he had received and recurrent attacks of asthma.
She said, “The patient was eventually referred to
the National Hospital, Abuja with ongoing blood transfusion with another extra
pint of blood taken along in the hospital ambulance.
“FSH did all that was reasonable and
professionally possible within our disposal. One of the surgeons even had to
donate his own blood during resuscitation. There was no negligence on our part;
he was stabilised and referred to the National Hospital where his chances of
survival would have been better.”
However, the spokesperson for the National
Hospital, Dr. Tayo Haastrup, said that most of the
allegations of negligence against the hospital were not true.
He said some hospitals had cultivated the habit
of bringing “dead” patients to National Hospital, adding that it was only when
cases of some patients had become too bad that they were brought to the NH.
To check the trend, Haastrup said the management
had now decided that before patients would be admitted, comprehensive checks
would be carried out to ascertain whether they were brought in alive and their
chances of survival.
He said, “I know that there is no way we will
carry out a surgery without a consent form (to be filled by the patient or a
family member). Let me find out the details; but the problem with National
Hospital is that when medical cases become bad outside, they will rush them to
National Hospital.
“Patients will be rushed from other hospitals to
us when their cases have become so bad. We will do our best but when the
patients eventually die, they will attribute the blame to National Hospital
calling it negligence.
