My name is Oluwakemi Elizabeth Oduwaiye (Nee Odekunle). I am a medical practitioner (surgeon) in England. I had an unfortunate encounter with the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital recently, a case of clear medical negligence that resulted in the death of my 69 yr old father. I have tried to seek legal closure to this case, but due to the overwhelming corruption status of the society, I have been unable to get the help that I need. I, therefore, feel the need to create awareness about the current unsafe medical system currently being operated in this hospital with the hope to save other potential victims from similar fate).
I am the first born of my father who has 3 children, 2 girls and 1 boy. My parents separated on my 11th birthday and they decided to share the children.
I was sent to live with my father while my other sibblings were cared for by my mother. My mother made sure that my siblings had very little or nothing to do with my father as she had very little to do with me. I had to grow up caring for my father, and I cared for him until his last breath!
This is in response to the rejoinder from the UITH dated 19/10/2016. I thank SaharaReporters for the attention given to my story published on 18/10/2016 about how the University of Ilorin Teaching hospital killed my father. The essence of my story was to create awareness to the general public about the current state of the medical care provided by UITH.
I have to say that this is the first time that UITH will grant me or any audience at all as all efforts to communicate with the hospital has been
futile.
I am not surprised however that the story has been manipulated in defense of the hospital. This is very concerning from a medical practitioner perspective.
The facts of the matter is that as at day 4 of my father’s admission into the hospital, his relative (Dr Oyedepo) who is an anesthetic consultant in the hospital confirmed that my father was yet to be reviewed by the surgical consultant. His excuse was that the consultant (Dr. Adesina) was in the middle of conducting some medical exams and was therefore too busy to review any patients within the hospital.
The resident doctor (Dr. Lawal) whom I subsequently spoke to over the phone on day four also confirmed that he was waiting for the consultant to review before he could approve a CT scan that I had suggested to Dr. Oyedepo even before my father arrived in the hospital.
Dr. Oyedepo did mention that because of the cost, they did not routinely do a CT scan to investigate such but that if I was willing to Pay for it, it should be done. I suggested this in order to assist the surgeons in making a prompt diagnosis before surgery. I would have been happy if they had proceeded to operate even without the CT scan but as the consultant had not reviewed, it was impossible to make any decision.
The consultant did not review my dad until Thursday (29/10/2015).
I was constantly on the phone monitoring the care of my father and therefore had all the first-hand information. If UITH are now claiming that my father was reviewed within 24 hours by a consultant, that is quite concerning as that will now raise another issue of falsification of facts and tampering with the original casenotes.
2. My father was never admitted to the private hospital in question. He had presented the week before and was prescribed some laxatives that hadn’t worked. His second presentation necessitated further investigations ie abdominal Ultrasound scan as well as an X-ray. The diagnosis of intestinal obstruction was already made at the private hospital from where my father was referred to the teaching hospital. I spoke to the managing doctor!
3. The nasogastric tube was removed by my father almost immediately the following insertion as he mentioned that he was choking on it and therefore unable to breathe. By the way, he had another tube inserted by Dr. Lawal the following day which he tolerated (Obviously because it was inserted correctly this time).
4. UITH did not carry out any blood tests until Friday (20/10/2015) when I suggested to Dr. Oyedepo a repeat blood test as the test they were acting on was four days old( brought from the private hospital). The element that was elevated was Creatinine which would have been corrected by day 4 with intravenous fluid infusion.
5. The decision to operate on my father was on day 8, and the surgery was scheduled for day 9!
6. All efforts to retrieve the autopsy report from the hospital by my lawyer met a brickwall.
My last lawyer visited the hospital with the intention to collect the autopsy report but was also refused.
I made a phone call to the pathologist to retrieve the autopsy report and I was also denied!
I have just been informed that today, following the article on SaharaReporters, UITH have now agreed to release the autopsy report.
In view of the level of distortion of facts in the response of the hospital, I am now forced to believe that the autopsy report or any other documentation they are producing or releasing now must have been doctored to suit the defense of the hospital. Why else would it take so long to get a response and why did they blatantly refuse to produce or release the documents to my lawyers until the statutes of limitation were imposed on the case?
There are several worrying issues here. The most important of it all is the fact that a hospital as important as the UITH will be willing to cover up a case of medical negligence as obvious as this one. What then are they teaching the upcoming doctors? How are their trainees supposed to learn from their mistakes if the hospital refuses to accept that they have made any error? What is then the future of medical practice in Nigeria?
This is quite worrying If they are claiming that there was no medical negligence, how then can they explain the painful and agonizing death of my father from intestinal obstruction after 9 days of admission in their hospital?
