Esther Salifu
Following the death of Ifeoluwa Ayodele a student of Federal University of Agriculture, FUNAB, who died in school hospital, the students had blamed the death on negligence of staff members and poor medical service.
The angry students entered the campus gate on Thursday and started protesting claiming that the deceased died due to poor health care facilities in their school .
According to a student, the medical staff did not attend to Ayodele immediately they got to to the medical centre because he did not take his ID card along.
He said “The staff members’ negligence is irritating. They would not attend to you as fast as they should. The boy got there around 1 p.m.; they delayed him until 6:50 pm and he was proclaimed dead around 10 pm. It was because he did not take his ID card along, so they did not attend to him fast. What we are advocating is change.
“This makes it the third similar occurrence in three months as a result of their negligence and poor service delivery.”
“Most of what we protested against was the poor service of the clinic. We just want a change. Ayodele was unconscious when he was taken to the medical centre and when they checked his pulse, they discovered that he had died.
Reacting to the protests, in a video clip the Vice Chancellor, Olusola Kehinde said he has verified what actually happened from the health centre.
According to Kehinde, the deceased was brought in dead, and the staff members tried to resuscitate him, but their efforts were abortive.
“His friends got to the health centre and when they saw the patient gasping for breath, they put a spoon in his mouth and poured water on him. When they took his corpse to the FMC, they told them that they should not have poured water on him.
“They brought him to the hospital, there were two nurses, a doctor, and the people there brought him into the doctor’s consulting room. I spoke to the matron and doctor this morning, and they said that they checked his pulse and found that there was no pulse; they checked his heartbeat, and there was no beat. The eye was already dilated, and immediately the doctor told the nurse that this was dead on arrival.”
However, the university’s Students’ Union President, Meshack Nwankwo, on Thursday, said the protest was primarily about the poor service of the health centre and disclosed that his statement was based on the accounts of eyewitnesses and those who rushed the deceased to the hospital.
“Most of what we protested against was the poor service of the clinic. We just want a change. Ayodele was unconscious when he was taken to the medical centre and when they checked his pulse, they discovered that he had died.
“The protest was only for the health centre to be standardised and their services to be improved. I will not say the boy died due to negligence from the medical centre, but according to the person who took him there, the three nurses who were on duty attended to him. They later found out that he was dead,” Nwankwo said
