The Nation Newspaper

Tag: survivors

  • Survivors of Lagos boat mishap recount ordeal

    Some of the survivors of Festac, Lagos boat accident that claimed 14 lives on Tuesday, yesterday recounted their ordeals, just as they vowed never to go near the canal again.

    Samuel Ochina and Godfery Etukufot, who said they were still in shock, said the boat capsized within seconds without signals. The survivors, who spoke with The Nation at their homes, said they had since lost sleep.

    To Etukufot, a student writing his examination, said: “I am still shocked at how it all happened. It was like a movie, but I thank God for my life. I was on my way to 512 Road to buy something that evening. It was not dark yet.

    “I was with my friend, Daniel Peters, and there were some people collecting money. They told us they would carry only 13 people, which was the boat’s capacity. We paid, entered and sat at the back of the boat.

    “Suddenly, some boys rushed in and insisted they must go with the fully-loaded boat. The peddler eventually succeeded in fixing three persons per seat instead of two. We complained, but he insisted that nothing would happen.

    “Before we took off, water had already started entering the boat. Also, the peddler could not push the boat and three boys came out to help him roll into the water. The driver asked us to sit well without shaking, adding that nothing would happen.”

    He further recalled: “On getting to the middle of the water, the canoe bent and water filled it up. People started jumping into water, but I sat still. I was in the canoe until it sank, but I tried to swim out, but somebody held my leg and I shove him off. I swam to the centre of the smelling water and turned to see if I could help anyone as they were holding themselves, but I feared I might get drowned. So, I swam to the shore at Sixth Avenue and raised the alarm.

    “My friend, Peters, too was lucky; when he came out, we left the place because my body was itching. We went home, showered and came back to the scene within 30 minutes, only to realise that it was only six of us that came out – five men plus Aisha (a woman). People were bringing out the corpses. I cried for them, especially the children. It pained me that I could not safe anyone.”

    “Nothing will make me pass there again, even if they construct a bridge. But still, because it is the fastest and cheapest route for people here, I think it is important that the government builds a pedestrian bridge,” Etukufot said, adding that overloading was a normal thing for boat operators at the canal.

    Ochina, who described the ordeal as unforgettable, added: “Water flooded the canoe at once…My legs could not touch the ground and I was neck-deep in the water. I struggled and moved my head up. I held my phone tightly on one hand and swam with the other one till I got to the Fourth Avenue side of the water.

    “Immediately the canoe sank, those who could not swim went down but there was this Hausa woman who was struggling. So, when sighted her, I pulled off my shirt and dived into the water. I held her with one hand and swam with the other, but I could not save three of her children. The incident happened bout 8pm and there was no help in sight. There were about five children in the boat. One of them held the boat peddler by the waist. I think that was why he died because he got tired. Victims were under water for about three hours before their corpses were removed. I have not been able to eat nor sleep since then.”

    Ochina, who urged government to construct a bridge there, lamented that no tricycle plies the road and that bikes charge as much as N200 to N300 to transport people.

  • Tinubu visits crash survivors

    Tinubu visits crash survivors

    •Calls for overhaul of aviation sector 

    Former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu yesterday visited the survivors of the Associated Aviation crash at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where they are being treated.

    The aircraft which was conveying the body of the former Ondo State governor, Dr. Olusegun Agagu and some others to Akure crashed on Thursday after taking off in Lagos.

    Shortly after landing at the Murtal Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) visited the victims. He was accompanied by his wife Senator Oluremi, the interim spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji and other party stalwarts.

    The former Lagos governor spent some time at the ward.

    He described the death of the former Ondo State governor as a great loss to the country, describing Agagu as a good man he will miss despite their partisan differences.

    He said Nigerians should give thanks to God for sparing the lives of Agagu’s son: Feyi and the son in law in the crash, affirming that government needs to fix the corruption and rot in the aviation sector.

    Speaking in an interview on arrival at the airport, he described the crash as a national disaster, and called on the Federal Government to urgently overhaul the aviation sector.

    He said until professionals are put in place to oversee the industry, the country may not meet the global standard of aviation it desires.

    Rather than put the right personnel and equipment in place including a world standard runway, government he said has used the aviation sector to victimise perceived political enemies , whose aircraft are either grounded or recalled mid air.

    He cited examples of the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi and the Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.

    Asiwaju said “Agagu was a committed family man. Tunji (Okusanya) was a close friend of every one of us. But God has done one thing, has shown us His wonders. In the midst of all of these, Feyi Agagu survived, his brother in law survived.

    “He has given room for us to give thanks to God. Nigeria’s aviation sector is a risk, we have never allowed professionals to run the Aviation industry, and we created too much bureaucracy. Where are the professionals, where are the engineers? What is the age of the plane and the records of maintenance? But when they have already compromised the office, they waste our valuable lives and time.”

    He lamented that corruption has crippled the system, as according to him, “We have to remove corruption that is a cancer in our society. We have to remove ethnicity and clannishness in our society; it is a shame on our society.”

  • Breast cancer survivors may be more likely to develop diabetes

    Breast cancer survivors may be more likely to develop diabetes

    New research from Women’s College Research Institute and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences indicates that post-menopausal breast cancer survivors have an increased risk of developing diabetes compared to women who haven’t had breast cancer.

    These research findings build on what is already known about a relationship between breast cancer and diabetes.

    “There’s increasing evidence showing that patients with diabetes have a higher risk of several types of cancer, and worse prognoses when they get it compared to those without diabetes,” says Dr. Lorraine Lipscombe, a scientist at Women’s College Research Institute and lead author of the study. “This study was to see whether the reverse was true: whether cancer patients might have a higher risk of future diabetes once they survive their cancer.”

    The results showed a small but significant increase in diabetes risk among post-menopausal breast cancer survivors.

    Dr. Lipscombe and her colleagues used health databases from Ontario to identify 24,976 post-menopausal survivors of early stage breast cancer diagnosed between 1996 and 2006, and a comparison group of 124,880 women the same age who did not have breast cancer. None of the women had diabetes at the start of the study.

    During 12 years of followup, 14,576 women were diagnosed with diabetes: 2,440 cases in breast cancer survivors and 12,136 in the comparison group. The researchers found that the breast cancer survivors were more likely to develop diabetes than the comparison group. The risk was 7 per cent higher in breast cancer survivors two years after diagnosis, but increased over time to 21 per cent higher 10 years after diagnosis.

    “Among postmenopausal breast cancer survivors we found that compared to age-matched women who didn’t have breast cancer, they had a small but significant increase in developing diabetes over time, and the risks started to go up in the majority of women after two years from their cancer diagnosis,” Dr. Lipscombe says. “But we also found that among the women who got chemotherapy the risk actually increased early on after their diagnosis.”

    There was a different pattern among breast cancer survivors who underwent chemotherapy. In this group, the diabetes risk was concentrated in the first two years after diagnosis, with a 24 per cent higher risk of diabetes among breast cancer chemotherapy patients compared to the comparison group. There was no increased risk after that two-year period in women who had chemotherapy.

    “We don’t know why that is but we wonder if something about the chemotherapy might have unmasked or brought out diabetes in women who were vulnerable to getting it, and brought it out at that stage instead of later,” Dr. Lipscombe says. “One possibility is, we know that in most cases when a patient gets chemotherapy they get medications called glucocorticoids, or steroids, which we know increase propensity for diabetes.”

    Dr. Lipscombe notes that the study cannot determine the reasons for the relationship between breast cancer and diabetes, but says one possibility is that there are shared risk factors between the two conditions, such as obesity and insulin resistance, and this may lead to a common risk for both breast cancer and diabetes.

    “This study raises awareness of an association between cancer and diabetes that warrants further research,” says Dr. Lipscombe, adding that the results also suggest that as breast cancer patients are surviving more long-term, there is a need to pay more attention to some of the long-term health consequences that may affect these women.

    “Further work needs to be done to understand what those consequences are, but in the mean time one potential issue for them is an ongoing increased risk of diabetes, and so greater attention to preventive measures such as healthy lifestyle, regular exercise and keeping to a healthy weight might help to mitigate that risk,” Dr. Lipscombe says. “We also need to understand what are some of the other risk factors for that population that may put them at higher risk, and so they need to speak to their doctors about what their risk factors might be and whether they should be screened more closely for diabetes.