₦airaland Forum

Very sad! Unnecessary loss of life! Please take heart, may Oluchi’s soul rest in peace.
The Amaku care system you painted looks very bad! But that is almost representative of Nigeria’s health care system and, by extension, everything Nigerian, arguably. Not surprising, after all, every context in Nigeria has been poorly led!
From your description, it looks like the only doctors working in that hospital or accessible to patients are medical students! It also looks like those medical students did not know how to meet the most basic health needs of a person that has been admitted into their care! They also seem to lack the attitude and caring skills of healthcare workers! The ethical quality there seems to leave a lot to be desired! What’s more, your description is a clear indictment of Nigeria’s healthcare system!
That hospital clearly looks poorly led to say the least. Medical students can only perform certain tasks under supervision. So there should have been an experienced doctor (medical officer, resident doctor or consultant) teaching, guiding and providing direction to them. So where were the experienced doctors when Oluchi was admitted! Why was it a medical student that should ask for admission related fee?
Healthcare delivery should be collaborative. Your description did not give any hint that healthcare workers other than doctors were involved in her care. So were there no nurses in that ward or emergency unit where Oluchi was admitted! No ward manager, nursing sister or staff nurse there! Your tended to indicate that the medical students also did the morgue work taking her body out. Unfortunately your efforts to get her family involved were unsuccessful! But I doubt if those efforts were enough. Her school and school clinic should have started attempting to contact the family once she was admitted into the clinic and showed signs of a grave ill health!
Whatever was the underlying cause of her illness, a properly functioning facility would have sustained that lady’s health in my own opinion. From the description, Oluchi’s case was not likely complex. Simply people did not know what to do or did not have the things to work with or there was a failure in the systems process and leadership! Simply putting her in a comfortable/appropriate position, monitoring her closely, giving her iv fluids, oxygen and few rescue medications should have been used to buy time pending more advanced and specific treatment options. A good team work should have helped a lot. In a facility like that with seemingly no experienced doctors, having a well functioning and supported nursing team would have been enough to guarantee those initial interventions. Nursing input in that care was clearly missing. Were employed doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers on strike at that time!
Things need to change for this country to make a head way. In this Oluchi’s case, questions need to be asked, heads need to roll and people need to be fired!
Doctors who are leading Nigeria’s hospital and health ministry after lofty education should be ashamed of what is coming out of the health system that they run! They should come to their knees before the whole nation and beg for forgiveness for bringing shame on this country; that they cannot meet the most basic health care needs of the people, allowing Nigerians to die in their hands from simple medical issues! Nurses and other healthcare workers should hide their faces in shame that they have all allowed hospitals in Nigeria to be turned to where Nigerians are butchered! Nigerian educational stakeholders and professional regulators should cover their faces in shame for failing to ensure healthcare workers are properly taught! Nigerian masses, shame on you all for your gross failure to hold your leaders and healthcare workers accountable; shame on you for allowing your service providers to compromise on standards!