Am actually in tears now as I
share this Painful Story!
What A Loss! FOR Temitope
Sanni, the birth of a set of
triplets has become more of a
curse than blessing: Shortly after they were born, the
babies, all boys, died one after
the other. Reason being that
the parents could not raise the
N4,000 required of them to
buy drugs. Apparently because of the
family’s indigent condition,
the woman was delivered of
the babies in the
parlour of the Face-Me-I-Face-
You bungalow she and her husband share with others, at
Ilogbo, near Sango-Ota, Ogun
State.
The home delivery was
carried out by her niece.
Seeing that the kids were too fragile, the mother and father
were advised to take them to
a clinic. At a nearby clinic,
Damisile Medical Centre, the
family was advised to rush
the babies to a general hospital.
With N2,500 as all they could
gather, the family rushed the
babies to the Lagos State
University Teaching Hospital
(LASUTH), but were told that there were no beds to admit
the babies and their mother.
The mother and father dashed
out of LASUTH and went to
the Federal Government-
owned Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). By
the time they arrived at LUTH,
one of the babies had died. At
LUTH, they were told to go
buy some drugs for the
remaining two boys. The total cost of the drugs was put at
N4,000.
Having paid transport fare
from their home, first to
LASUTH and then to LUTH, the
total money left on the mother, a petty trader, and
her husband was N1,850.
In frustration, they left for
home hoping to raise money.
By the time they got home
some 30 minutes after, another of the boys had died.
Few hours after, the third also
died.
The Minister of Health, Prof.
C.O. Onyebuchi Chukwu had
recently lamented lamented that at present, there is no
mechanism for emergency
care in the country.