The Federal Capital Territory, FCT authorities have directed all hospitals in the nation’s capital to administer treatment to gunshot victims before requesting for police reports.
This came as the FCT administration has resolved to establish police posts in all hospitals in the nation’s capital city to ease difficulties associated with issuance of police reports to accident victims.
The FCT Mandate Secretary for Health Services and Environment, Adedolapo Fasawe, disclosed these while receiving the report of a 10-man investigative panel set up by the minister, Nyesom Wike, to unravel the circumstances that surrounded the death of Abuja ‘one-chance’ victim, Ms Greatness Olorunfemi two months ago.
The panel’s report released Wednesday said Olorunfemi died before arriving at the Maitama General Hospital contrary to reports in some quarters that she died hours after being denied treatment by doctors for not providing police report.
The chairman of the panel, Prof. Aminu Muhammad, who led members to submit the report, said the investigation was comprehensive, involving interviews with all individuals connected to the unfortunate incident.
However, Mohammad said three individuals did not comply with the panel’s invitation.
According to him, the security officer on duty confirmed the presence of a lifeless body in the vehicle, while the driver of the vehicle that transported the body informed the panel that he believed that the body was lifeless.
The panel denied report that claimed the victim was left to bleed to death. This, it argued, was because there was a lack of evidence of blood from the scene of the victim’s pickup area to the vehicle that transported her to the hospital.
The panel exonerated the medical workers of the Maitama General Hospital of any wrongdoing, stating that there was no evidence indicating that the medical officers insisted on a police report before attending to the vic
Muhammad stated that Ms. Olorunfemi received attention 40 seconds after being brought to the hospital at 8:35:10 pm and according to CCTV camera footage, she was attended to at 8:35:50 pm, 8:39:00 pm, and 8:41:00 pm, respectively.
According to him, the viral video circulating on social media, depicting the victim in a sitting position, does not provide any indication of life. Even as the panel did not carry out an autopsy on Olorunfemii’s body, it said the cause of her death was strangulation.
The panel also deemed the testimony of a witness who asserted being in the same vehicle as the deceased during a national television interview unreliable, citing contradictions in the date she provided as the incident date.
In its recommendations, the panel emphasized the necessity for expanding hospital infrastructure in the capital territory.
The panel highlighted that hospital services are insufficient, with shortages in both equipment and personnel, thereby compromising service delivery.
While acknowledging that the medical officers did not adhere to professional standards by examining the victim in the vehicle and open space within the hospital rather than placing her on a stretcher and providing private treatment in an E&E unit, the panel recommended training and retraining for medical personnel employed by the FCT.
The panel further recommended that the Police should initiate an investigation into the matter, and a comprehensive autopsy should be conducted to determine the definitive cause and precise time of death.
In her remarks, the Mandate Secretary, Fasawe explained that the panel’s report has refuted the social media allegation that the deceased was brought into the hospital alive.
She noted that the report indicated that it was evident that Ms. Olorunfemi was a victim of insecurity, and this had no correlation with the emergency response treatment provided by Maitama Hospital.
However, she offered an apology to the victim’s family for the way the body was attended to in the vehicle, acknowledging that it fell outside professional requirements.
Fasawe said: “I assure you that we are looking into all the deficiencies in our systems and we will be attending to these failures.”
Culled from Vanguard
