Hospitals as slaughter slabs

Reported deaths from medical procedures in recent times freshly raised concerns about the quality of healthcare delivery in Nigerian hospitals. Bitter experiences that people had ranged from wrong diagnoses of ailments and errors in surgical processes to delayed treatment even in emergencies and poor post-surgical care, resulting in loss of loved ones who entered hospitals seeking help and never returned home. Allegations are rife that many of the patients might have made it, but they were speeded onto their death by indiscretions or utter negligence of medical personnel in healthcare facilities who, for most part, deny responsibility.

Early last week, there was the report of a school headmistress in Ibadan who died because hospitals in the Oyo State capital declined response to her emergency situation. Relations said the headmistress of the Nigerian Army Officers’ Wives Association (NAOWA) Model Nursery and Primary School, Letmuck Barracks in Mokola, Mrs. Ajayi Omowunmi Fajuyigbe, gave up the ghost after being rejected by several hospitals to which she was rushed in critical condition. A relative was cited saying Fajuyigbe, on Monday, 13th January, was moved at night between hospitals in Mokola, Adeoyo, Oluyoro and Basorun areas of the capital city, but was denied admission on sundry grounds until about 1:00a.m. when a private hospital in Idi-Ape took her in after a hefty payment.

Even then, according to the relative, an urgent surgery that was required for the endangered patient was not carried out by the hospital that finally took her on admission, until she went into coma and eventually died. “It is painful that hospitals appear more interested in money than saving lives,” she lamented, wondering why hospitals would turn away emergency patients at night. “My sister’s life could have been saved if she had received prompt attention,” the relation added.

A particularly sensational case was the death on 6th January in a Lagos hospital of 21-month-old Nkanu Nnamdi, one of the twin boys of internationally renowned Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Nkanu and his twin brother were born to United States-based Adichie and her spouse, Ivara Esege, a doctor, by surrogacy in 2024 – eight years after the birth of their first child, a girl. He died at Euracare Hospital, a private medical facility, following a brief illness.

Nkanu’s death occurred a day before he was due for medical evacuation to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, not far from the couple’s US home. He had been referred from another Lagos hospital to Euracare for a series of diagnostic procedures that included an echocardiogram and a brain MRI. The parents, in a legal action filed against Euracare, alleged lapses during the child’s admission and lack of basic resuscitation equipment, amounting to medical negligence.

In a WhatsApp chat to family members that was leaked to social media, Adichie said a doctor confessed to her that the resident anaesthesiologist administered sedative overdose on Nkanu. Despite efforts at his resuscitation and being put on a ventilator, the boy suffered cardiac arrest that led to his death. Adichie described the anaesthesiologist as having been “fatally casual and careless.”

In response to the leak, Euracare expressed its “deepest sympathies” over the loss of the child but denied administering improper care, saying its services were “in line with established clinical protocols and internationally accepted medical standards.” According to the hospital, it is inaccurate to suggest that medical negligence caused Nkanu’s death, but rather that its personnel provided standard care upon admission of the toddler who was brought in “critically ill.”

Lagos State Government ordered a probe of the matter, saying it “places the highest value on human life and has zero tolerance for medical negligence or unprofessional conduct.” Special Adviser to the State Governor on Health Matters, Dr. Kemi Ogunyemi, added: “Any individual or institution found culpable of negligence, professional misconduct or regulatory violations will face the full wrath of the law.”

“Hospital deaths: The problem is largely the ecosystem of healthcare delivery in this country”

Meanwhile, a 30-year-old Lagos father, about the same time Adichie’s bereavement became news, took issue with government’s own facility, accusing a primary healthcare centre in the state of causing the deaths of his nine-month-old twin boys whom he took for routine immunisation. Samuel Alozie, known as Promise Samuel on TikTok, alleged that the twin boys died same day after being administered immunisation at Ajangbadi primary health centre in Ojo council area.

Alozie said in a social media post that he took the children for immunisation on December 24, 2005, and they died on Christmas Day. According to him, the immunisation made the boys very weak and inflamed their body temperature such that they had to be given paracetamol as advised by the nurse. “My wife and I, after we left the health centre, went home and gave the two of them paracetamol, but it didn’t solve anything. We even bathed them in cold water,” he recalled.

The distraught father dismissed explanation by the health facility that food bacteria was responsible for the infants’ death: “The nurse said it was food bacteria that killed my children… Food that I’ve been giving them from one month to nine months, and it didn’t kill them?” Alozie accused the health centre of having possibly administered expired or fake vaccines, or an overdose on the twins for which he held government liable. He noted that while an autopsy had been conducted, he has reservations about the possible outcome: “The reason I’m scared is that I don’t know if government will give me justice because this is government-to-government. The primary health centre is government’s, and the people running the case are government people.” The Lagos State Ministry of Health and the Primary Health Care Board had yet to issue an official statement on the alleged incident or release autopsy findings.

Easily the most scandalous of medicare miscarriages was the case of Aishatu Umar, who died as a result of surgical implement being forgotten in her bowel after surgery. The 33-year-old mother of five lost her life 12th January, 2026, not from a sudden ailment but what family members described as drawn-out medical negligence that began with a surgery she underwent at Abubakar Imam Urology Centre (AIUC), Kano, in September 2025 after doctors diagnosed her with a kidney cyst that caused her frequent abdominal pain.

That surgery was projected to bring her relief, but the contrary was the case. Aishatu began having chronic pain that, upon complaining to the hospital, she was repeatedly assured was a normal post-surgery experience that would soon fade out. Unknown to her and her family, something had gone terribly wrong in the operating theatre: a surgical implement was forgotten in her bowel by doctors before sewing her back. Aishatu’s husband, Abubakar Mohammed, said he got a distress call from her on 9th January that she could no longer bear the excruciating pain. Upon being referred to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), a series of scans and other diagnostic tests revealed the object left in her abdomen during the earlier operation at AIUC. “Immediately the result came out, she was prepared for emergency surgery. Around 11p.m. on January 12th, Aishatu was taken into the theatre, but she did not come out alive. Before they even started operating, we lost her,” Mohammed recounted.

The Chief Medical Director of AIUC, Balarabe Muhammad, was reported denying claims that a scissors was forgotten in Umar’s bowel: “It was an artery forceps that was forgotten in the patient and not a scissors. An artery forceps is not as sharp as a scissors.” He added: “I am not denying that a medical implement was forgotten in her system, but I can say that Aishatu didn’t die as a result of the forceps that was in her system. Rather, she died from anaesthesia administered on her at AKTH.”

For his part, AKTH’s Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, Suwaid Abba, rebuffed the claim that anaesthesia killed Aishatu.  “It is very unfair to push the blame on AKTH. If a medical equipment wasn’t forgotten in her system, she would not have been here in the first place,” he argued, adding: “She died before our doctors operated on her. It is unfair that anyone will blame us for the death.”

The problem is largely the ecosystem of healthcare delivery in this country. Besides inadequacy of facility in hospitals, available doctors are overwhelmed by a high volume of patients amidst severe “brain drain” of medical professionals – with nearly 19,000 doctors having emigrated over the past couple of decades and a record 3,974 leaving in 2024 alone. Over 50 percent of licensed doctors have left, with more than half of those remaining actively seeking ways to leave. Official data show that Nigeria currently has roughly 3.8 doctors per 10,000 patients, significantly below World Health Organisation prescription. Government must find a way of stimulating reverse personnel traffic – i.e. “brain gain” – to remedy the situation.