First Consultants Medical Centre, the hospital that diagnosed the index case of the Ebola virus disease in Nigeria, says it has assumed responsibility for the children and relations of their employees who died after contracting the disease.
The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Benjamin Ohiaeri, disclosed this while receiving a delegation from the World Health Organisatio (WHO), who visited the facility yesterday.
Ohiaeri said it was the least the hospital could do for its employees who died after contracting the disease from the Liberian_American, Mr. Patrick Sawyer, who imported the disease into the country.
He said the children of one of the nurses, Mrs Evelyn Ukwo, had been provided a new accommodation after they were ejected by the landlord who owns the apartment their mother rented before her death.
He said the hospital has assigned a senior staff to ensure that the children are well taken care of.
According to him, their mother worked with the hospital for 31 years.
“So when we got them the apartment, I said your mother was diligent and honest. This is what she represented. One of them burst into tears. I told them never to let their family, especially their mother down,” Ohiaeri said.
He also told the WHO delegation that the hospital risked legal action to keep the late Sawyer in the hospital once he was suspected to be carrying the disease.
Ohiaeri recalled that the hospital was pressured by Sawyer and the Liberian Ambassador to Nigeria to discharge him, “but we refused on the grounds that public good must be considered above all else.”
Ohiaeri said this was despite persistent threat made against the hospital by the Liberian Ambassador that international law would be invoked against the country should the late Sawyer come out negative.
“As if that was not bad enough, the Liberian Ambassador said the late Sawyer had fundamental human rights which he should be allowed to exercise. But we insisted that he would not be allowed to go until we confirmed what we thought we were talking about.
“The Ambassador said if we continued to keep Mr 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 a law suit.
“But the hospital’s executive committee, made up of three senior doctors, deliberated on it and concluded that although Sawyer had the right to sign against medical advice, we could not let him go for public good.
“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 would not be in the public good to let him out.
“Forty-eight hours later, the confirmation came that he was an Ebola patient. The key is that we were ready for a situation that even if the test came out negative, we trusted our physicians and we were prepared to back them on clinical grounds.
“If the test had come out negative, we were to go to court to defend ourselves. We were prepared to face the public to say what we did.
“The Ambassador said, ‘I will come and take him. I will take him to Calabar and bring him back the following day. l will guarantee his return.’ But we at First Consultants refused and did not let him out.”
The CMD said the hospital is bereaved, adding that this reflects in the mood of its staff and management.
He said: “Although Nigeria might have heaved a sigh of relief from the Ebola saga, the hospital is still counting its losses. Despite being shut for two months, the hospital was still paying its bills.
“This is a hospital that was established 1982 and had not been closed for one day.
“We were shut for over two months before we were reopened two months ago. You can begin to imagine what we went through.”
He said the hospital would have failed the country if it had allowed Sawyer to go.
Dr Ada Igonoh and Dr Akinniye Fadipe, who survived the virus contacted from the late Liberian-American, said their survival was borne out of strong will to overcome the virus.
Dr Igonoh said she never entertained any fear of succumbing to the disease.
She said her sheer determination gave her the strength to overcome the deadly disease.
Dr Fadipe said he was determined to defeat the disease, adding that he was weary at some point.
Fadipe said: “I was devastated when the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol officer died, because we were in the same room and he was close to me. I thought that was how Ebola would kill us one after the other.”
He said the Federal Ministry of Health made a promise to him that all the hospital had lost to the Ebola virus would be replaced, but nothing had so far been done about it.
“I don’t know why the government reneged on its promise,” he said.
A WHO official, Dr Samantha Bolton, said the hospital protocol and quality of staff were important to the Ebola response.
She commended Nigeria on the level of Ebola awareness, describing it as “very high”.
She said Texas in the United State needed to borrow a leaf from how Nigeria responded to the EVD outbreak.
Dr Bolton, who was part of the team, led by the Federal Government Emergency Team, said the Nigeria example is “a little advice for Dallas”.
A clinician and a member of the team, Dr Simon Mardel commended Nigeria for containing the disease.
He said he doubted if his hospital in Manchester, England would be able to diagnose the disease the way the hospital did.
