Ebola: First Consultant Hospital indicts Liberian Ambassador
First Consultants Medical Centre, the Lagos hospital where the man who
brought Ebola to Nigeria, late Liberian Patrick Sawyer died, has
indicted the Liberian Ambassador to Nigeria (pictured right) for his
involvement in the case, saying he put the hospital under pressure to
release Sawyer against the wish of its management, Vanguard reports.
Speaking to newsmen yesterday, the Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Benjamin Ohiaeri, said:
"The ambassador said if we continued to keep him (Sawyer), it would be
tantamount to kidnap and abuse of human right. He said if we did not
release him, we would be subjecting our hospital to international
diplomatic row and we should not rule out the possibility of law suit.”
The hospital lost four staff to the outbreak, two doctors and two nurses
"As if that was not bad enough for us, the Liberian Ambassador to
Nigeria started to put pressure on us that Mr Sawyer had his fundamental
human right that he wanted to leave the hospital and he should be
allowed to leave. In other words, we have a provision within the law
that allows the person to sign and leave the hospital. Meanwhile, there
is a superior provision within that law which is that you can decline
the patient for public good. In order to protect ourselves as an
institution, we called in our lawyer who drafted for us a resolution,
stating that we were not going to let Sawyer out because it will not be
in the public good to let him out.”
"Because we did not let him go, Mr. Sawyer unleashed his bio terror on
the staff of the hospital. He knew he had the disease, he was angry to
the extent that he released his blood to contaminate our people as they
came in. We lost four of our key staff who included, Dr. Adadevoh, she
worked here for 21 years, Dr. Amos Abaniwo, our Chief consultant
Anesthesiology and Director of clinical service, had been with us for 16
years. Dr. Adadevoh died leaving the husband and a son, Dr. Abaniwo
died leaving his wife and three kids, the third person that died was a
nurse Ejeleonu, she just started working with us that day. Unknown to us
she was two months pregnant and she died with the pregnancy. The fourth
person that died was nurse Evelyn Uko who had been working with us for
the past 31 years. She was a widow, a single parent raising four
children, she died living those children with us, multiple tragedy
because the four children were kicked out of the home because of the
stigma. So watching her is a combination of so much burden on First
Consultant
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