ACCIDENT VICTIMS AND HOSPITALS

THERE was a disturbance at the Accident and Emergency Centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) on the night of Friday, February 8. The LUTH authorities immediately closed the centre to patients in desperate need of medical attention.

THE LUTH authorities issued press releases and addressed a news conference following the publication of their unusual action in the media. The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Professor Akin Osibogun, said some people who brought a man hit by a vehicle to the hospital threatened to kill doctors and nurses on duty if the man’s life was not saved.
PROFESSOR Osibogun said the doctors and nurses took fright and vanished like startled ghosts. He said the alleged fatal attack on a nurse at the same centre two years before made the doctors’ abandonment of the victim justifiable. Not being a lawyer, Professor Osibogun did not say the doctors’ action was “justifiable homicide”.

THE Chief Medical Director said: “People are justifiably frightened. This is also based on past experience. This time round, no doctor or nurse was willing to stay back to make an unruly mob see reason. The unfortunate consequence of the action of this crowd of sympathisers was to drive away the very people who could save the life of the patient. Thus these ‘sympathisers’ ensured the death of the patient.”

THIS is insensitive drivel. People who take seriously ill relations to the hospital may be anxious about their condition, but they are not mad. They want the patients’ lives saved and are very respectful of doctors. No normal person will threaten a doctor even before he begins to attend to his ill relation. People know that doctors are not God and will not threaten to kill them if their relations are not restored to good health. They can only hope for the best.

A newspaper reported that doctors and nurses at LUTH’s Accident and Emergency Centre did not attend to the critically injured patient brought in on the night of February 8. It was this that angered the “mob” to use Professor Osibogun’s categorisation of the people that took the man to LUTH.

THE doctors did not ignore the accident victim because they wanted him to die. They were waiting for the patient to be issued a card before starting the process of trying to save his life! A man is bleeding to death and doctors do nothing because the dying man has not been issued a mere card or because his relations have not been able to pay a deposit of several thousands of naira.

THE newspaper stated that the people began to threaten the doctors and nurses when no attempt was made to save the patient’s life after he had been in the Accident and Emergency Centre for more than 30 minutes.

NIGERIAN doctors have strangely allowed themselves to be bound with the rope of ridiculous rules. Some of the rules do not even exist. Doctors insist on seeing a police report before treating victims of automobile accidents. Doctors have a duty to treat a person injured in auto accident, even if he caused it by driving while drunk.

THE police have not said that doctors should not treat auto accident victims, at least not to our knowledge. The police, until two years ago, warned doctors not to treat people with gunshot wounds until they were given a police report authorising them to do so.

THE doctors obeyed the order, which did not have the force of law, with unquestioning slavishness. People shot by robbers that could have been saved were allowed to die. Hospitals, including teaching hospitals, refused to treat gunshot victims, or even offer them first aid until they saw a police report. Many private hospitals told the people who brought the victims that they did not want “police trouble” and should take them to another hospital. Needless to say that most of the victims did not survive.

A national outcry against the directive of death and its facilitation by doctors forced the police to issue a statement. The police authorities said it had never told doctors not to treat people with gunshot wounds until the police gave them the permission to do so. They said they had merely insisted on the hospitals informing the police after stabilising the condition of the victims and making them available to be questioned.

THE police lied shamelessly. They had always threatened doctors with arrest if they treated people with gunshot wounds without first obtaining police permission. They said they gave the order because many armed robbers managed to escape after being shot by the police. But everybody knows that shot armed robbers do not go to hospitals for treatment. They usually go to herbalists.

DOCTORS are still refusing to treat gunshot victims, and even accident victims, though the police have clearly stated that their request – and not a rule – is that the doctors should inform them immediately after stabilising the condition of the patients.

THE humanitarian aspect of medicine, the most important aspect, has been conquered by crass commercialism in Nigeria. One teaching hospital allowed one of its employees to die because he was unable to pay a fat deposit. The authorities of the hospital told the dead man’s protesting colleagues that they could not bend the rules merely because the patient worked in the hospital.

HOSPITALS in Israel treat Palestinian patients with life-threatening diseases. Many of the patients, some of them needing urgent heart surgery, live in Gaza, a territory from where militants fire rockets into Israel.

BETWEEN VOGTS AND VOLTS

SHOULD Nigerians be surprised that the problems of power outages, low voltage or current they battle with everyday are affecting all aspects of their lives? There is power play in Nigeria’s football circles. It is still a low voltage drama, but it may likely turn into a full blackout.

NIGERIANS groan under the heavy blanket of darkness because their country cannot generate enough electricity that will turn their nights into colourful spectacles. Sometimes, the current that the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), the organisation responsible for generation and distribution of electricity, supplies is not as bright as the hurricane lamp. The recommended voltage for Nigeria is 220 but in most cases what is supplied is less than 50.

IT is unlikely that Nigeria will get out of its low voltage situation. In Ghana, at the just concluded African Cup of Nations, the country’s national team, the Super Eagles, performed very poorly. The Nigerian national team was coached by Mr. Berti Vogts. But Vogts’ Eagles did not fly at full current in Ghana; they were undercharged, because rather than getting the recommended 220 volts, they had just one Vogts. That ultimately affected the performance of the undercharged national football team and its undercurrent coach.

A few days ago, newspapers reported that Vogts had resigned from his technical adviser position. Nigerian soccer fans, who were fed up with low currents, were happy that they had finally overcome the problem of low voltage, that the national team would be boosted by new energy and power. It was even thought that the exit of Vogts would save the face of the under-performing Nigeria Football Association (NFA).

BUT just as Nigerians are unlikely to free themselves of the low voltage from PHCN, it appears the nation’s soccer buffs will continue to contend with one Vogts in the national team, as the national team coach has refuted his resignation claims. So should the Vogt situation worry Nigerians, when even governance is being run on a very low volt?