A weightlifter, Oluwasola Oladunjoye, has accused Korede Hospital, in Abeokuta, Ogun State, of killing his pregnant wife, Islamiat.
But the hospital has denied the claim.
Oladunjoye said his wife gave up the ghost in the hospital on Sunday after complications arising from a caesarian section (CS) by a team led by two medical doctors.
According to him, the doctor operating his wife allegedly abandoned her when he refused to pay an extra N150,000, in addition to the N300,000 he had been asked to pay earlier.
“When we got to the hospital, we were charged N300,000 for CS. They asked me to pay another N15,000 for some tests. I was asked to make a deposit of N300,000 and another N15,000 for the test.
“Later, I was invited into the theatre room. When I got there, the second doctor, he was the one who killed my wife. He told me to pay another N150,000, aside from the initial charges of N300,000. When I challenged him, he explained that the extra charge was because the baby was not in a good condition. Then, I left.
“When I returned to the theatre after they had completed the operation, both the baby and the mother were alive. The baby was fine. The doctor again said my wife has a tear and they would need to stitch it, pressing for the additional N150,000.
“Immediately I said I can’t pay, he stopped what he was doing, but I asked him to continue doing his job. I told him ‘Why would you stop the operation?’ I then left the theatre,” he said.
Oladunjoye explained he had left the hospital to pick some clothes for the baby and his wife when he was called to return.
“By the time I returned, to my surprise, I saw the same doctor donating blood to my wife. I felt that they actually knew what they did wrong, but they were looking for how to cover their tracks. We have not agreed on blood donation before they started doing it. I was confused. Why would a doctor donate blood to the patient?
“When I was invited to the ward, I discovered she had died,” he said amidst tears.
The distraught man said the management of Korede Hospital also called the police to get him arrested after his wife had died.
“They killed my wife and also asked the police to arrest me,” he exclaimed.
However, the management of the hospital, in its reaction, denied all the allegations by the husband, saying he was the one to be blamed for negligence.
The Chairman of Korede Hospital, Dr Tayo Apampa, said Oladunjoye’s wife was not a patient of the hospital but was admitted due to her critical condition.
Apampa said, “What happened was that this woman was not our patient; she was brought in as an emergency. Emergency in three states: one, she was in labour; two, she has had two previous caesarean sections; three, she has not attended any prior antenatal and four, they had no money.
“But the doctor, looking at the emergency state of the whole thing, did not consider that they had no money. The doctors went in straight into the theatre without them paying anything at all.”
He said they brought out the baby, but then noticed that the scars from her previous surgeries had already torn and was bleeding, so “they suctioned it”.
Apampa noted that the doctors checked the woman’s PCV level to ascertain whether or not she was fit for the CS. “The PCV was high and they went in for the surgery,” he said.
However, he added that they discovered that the woman was a bit pale after the surgery, so they looked for blood in the blood bank to give her when her relatives could not get anyone to donate for her.
“When the case was critical, the doctor donated his own blood in order to save the life of the woman. But unfortunately, despite all their best efforts, they lost the woman,” he narrated.
