By Kamil Opeyemi
Senate President Godswill Akpabio has narrated how he lost a grandchild due to medical neglect in a government hospital.
Akpabio gave the narrative on Friday during the screening of one of the ministerial nominee, Tunji Alausa on the floor of the upper lawmaking body in Abuja.
While Alausa was grilled and provided solutions to issues in Nigeria’s healthcare system, the lawmaker admitted to being a victim of medical neglect.
“Every other person has been a victim of medical neglect,” Akpabio said.
“My first grandchild in 2019 in a federal medical centre died through bleeding. He was receiving drip and it was tissued in the night, there was no help. No doctor, no nurse. He bled until he lost over 60 percent of his blood and almost going mental, he struggled and fell on the floor.
“He was looking for water to drink. He rolled on the floor outside and entered the early morning dew. Pour the dew all over his body and that’s where they found him. By that time, he had gone into a coma,” Senator Akpabio noted.
“I was on my way to Porthacourt for rally by the time they called me. I struggled. They went and brought a defibrillator to attempt to revive the heart, but it did not work.”
The senate president said when he asked about the time the defibrillator was last used, he was told the machine “stopped working eight years ago”.
“I used my hand and struggled with my personal physician, I could not revive him. I had to close his eyes and put him in the mortuary and then proceeded to Porthacourt for the rally.
“Almost every family has suffered from what is going on in our hospitals. The Doctor on duty that night had an emergency in his own private clinic and he had to abandon the hospital to rush to go and and attend to patient in his own private clinic,” he said
While urging President Bola Tinubu to correct the abnormalies in the nation’s health sector, Akpabio added that there is no way a country can be wealthy when its people are not healthy
“Health is wealth. There is no way a country can be wealthy when its people are not healthy,” added