Posted by This Day (Lagos) on
It is expected that any system worth its name, especially a health institution, would instinctively spring into action on a matter that concerns life and death.....
It is expected that any system worth its name, especially a health institution, would instinctively spring into action on a matter that concerns life and death. But that appears not to be the case with the federal ministry of health or the management of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) as it concerns the fate of Baby Oyinkansola. The authorities seem to be leisurely taking their time in responding to the question of how the little girl got infected with HIV while in the custody of LUTH.
It is remarkable that more than four months after the incident became public knowledge, the ministry of health is only now setting up an investigating panel to unravel the mystery. But even in its lateness, the setting up of the panel is commendable. So also is the suspension of four officials of LUTH to stop them from impeding investigations.
The baby who was born pre-mature early in the year at a Lagos private hospital, ended up in LUTH, which had incubating machines to accommodate it. The baby soon had jaundice, an infection requiring blood transfusion. Her father, Adewunmi Eniola, donated some blood after he and his wife had tested negative to HIV. But two weeks after the blood transfusion into the baby, her condition only got worse, provoking another round of test, which surprisingly proved that she was now HIV-infected. Since then till now, the Eniolas have been in a running battle in knowing how their baby contracted the deadly virus.
Now that the authorities have decided to look into the issue, we call on the investigating panel to be thorough in unraveling the matter. The panel needs to use this incident to beam the searchlight on the operational procedures of the hospital. What is happening at LUTH with the case of Oyinkansola points to a system failure. A properly functioning system would not only make such a fatal error nigh impossible, it would, by a process of checks and balances, make it easy to detect who did what in the event that the baby actually got infected at LUTH with the virus either by error of blood transfusion or by other means.
It is the inability of the LUTH system to unravel what actually happened that has made the setting up of the ministry panel inevitable. In which case, The Oyinkansola saga may just be an eye opener to the degree of rot in Nigeria's public health sector.
While we await the findings of the panel, we believe that the ministry of health should see the current problem at LUTH as a window to a review of the operational systems of all public health institutions, especially the teaching hospitals. At one time or the other, Nigerians have fallen victim to all manner of professional negligence in government hospitals, a major cause of loss of faith in public health institutions. No doubt, the problem in question cannot be peculiar to LUTH. We believe that the gale of reforms sweeping through the polity should also affect the health sector, as a way of reinforcing public confidence in the public health delivery system.