A young man identified simply as Joel has died after he was allegedly refused treatment at Isolo General Hospital in Lagos State for fear of having coronavirus.
Joel, it was learnt, slumped on Sunday while playing football and was rushed to the hospital.
A friend of the victim, who identified herself simply as Amaka, narrated the incident on Twitter.
Amaka claimed that nurses on duty at the time said they were too busy to attend to Joel.
“The medical system failed my family friend today and I’ll never get over it. He was said to be playing football in the field this morning and slumped and stopped breathing, he was immediately rushed to the Isolo general hospital in other to get attended to fast, getting there, they refused to let him in because they said they don’t know if he has Coronavirus!” she wrote.
“His family members kept begging and begging because time was running and he wasn’t getting any better, he was still not breathing…The nurses still insisted on not attending to him, because according to them, they have their plates full. They had to return him to the car and resulted in prayers.
“In tears, his elder sister still went back in and requested to see any doctor on duty, after so much argument a doctor came out, heard the whole story from the nurses on duty and without taking a look at him in the car or bringing him in to check him out, the doctor then certified him dead and asked them to transfer him to the mortuary. His mother collapsed on the spot…This life is so unfair.”
However, the hospital’s chief medical director, Dr Godwin Akhaboa, told Punch that the victim was brought in dead and that the facility was not in the habit of rejecting patients.
“The patient had a cardiac arrest on a football field and he was brought in dead,” he said.
