The report blaming doctors with Mother and Child Hospital, Akure, for the death of a five-year old boy has prompted the denial of the state chapter of the National Association of Government General Medical and Dental Practitioners.
The boy was rushed to the Ondo government hospital on Friday night and died the following day.
A drama succeeded his passing away with the bereaved father blaming the hospital staff for the demise, and accusing doctors of fiddling with phones while his son was between life and death.
As such, he fetched a cutlass from his car and went on rampage hitting doctors and nurses on sight and wounding a female doctor.
Reacting to the incident through a statement issued by the chairman and secretary of the doctors’ association, Dr Makinde Olugbenga and Dr. Adeniyi Adetayo respectively, they gave their account of how it happened pushing back at claims that they cruelly treated the patient.
The doctors’ account: “It saddens our hearts to inform the general public of the unwarranted premeditated attack on hapless doctors on call duty at Mother and Child Hospital, Akure by a patient’s relative (father) of a chronically ill child rushed to the facility on the 24th day of March, 2023 at about 11:00PM.
“While the pediatrics call Doctor was in the Emergency ward attending to a patient, a five-year-old male child chronically ill looking was brought in by his parents. At the time of arrival in the hospital, the child’s condition has deteriorated and immediately the call doctors rushed to see the child leaving what she was doing since the condition looks more severe.
“The child was also noticed to be gasping. Upon arrival, the doctors immediately attended to the child and began resuscitative measures on him. Despite the assistance of another fellow senior doctor who until then was busy in the obstetrics and gynecology department, joining to assist her colleague by using her phone to illuminate the cannular site, the patient finally died.
“But to the great surprise of the doctors and other present in the hospital, the patient’s father stormed out of the ward and returned thereafter with a cutlass, moving from ward to ward and assaulting any doctors and nurses on sight, the other hospital personnel were not spared.
“In the process, the senior doctor who came to lend a helping hand was assaulted with a cutlass and sustained grievous bodily injury and she is currently undergoing treatment.
“We wish to inform the Hospital Management and the general public that this assault on our Doctors and Nurses was premeditated, contrary to the misinformation being circulated in the public domain that the doctors on duty were pressing phone rather than attending to a chronically ill child.”
