Gunshot victims
Bukola Adebayo relates deadly hurdles that gunshot victims have to cross to get treatment in hospitals
Before the October 9, 2013 incident,
Vincent Olatunde had never imagined for once that he could be shot, much
less right in front of his house. But that was exactly what happened
when some hoodlums invaded his neighbourhood, leaving a trail of tears
and blood in their wake.
Not only had he lived in Bariga for two
decades, he was also well known for his activism and usual confrontation
with authorities as he advocated improvement in the standards of living
in the area.
Shot in broad daylight
Olatunde, who related the incident to
our correspondent at his new residence in Gbagada on Friday, said though
he realised that he had stepped on some toes, he did not expect to be
so attacked in broad daylight.
He says, “I left for the office very
early in the day and returned in the afternoon for a nap at home. I was
about entering my street when I noticed that some hoodlums had gathered
around and were surveying the neighbourhood.
“It looked as if they were on a mission
to wreak havoc somewhere. I wanted to call the police, but a neighbour
stopped me. Out of nowhere, they brought out their guns, jumped on bikes
and started shooting. Three of them pursued me into the house, while
others were shooting outside. I tried to scale the fence, but I
couldn’t. The next thing I saw was blood gushing out of my hand. It was
then I realised that I had been shot.”
‘Sorry, no experts here’
Getting shot was devastating enough for
Olatunde, but the real dilemma played out when he was taken to the
General Hospital in Somolu, Bariga, Lagos. Though there were nurses and
three doctors on duty that afternoon, they offered a rather lame excuse
for not attending to the bleeding man. Indeed, they quickly referred
the patient to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba.
Olatunde narrates, “The doctor on duty
said they could not treat me because they did not have a specialist that
could treat a gunshot wound. They said they could only offer first aid
treatment which should sustain me till I reached LASUTH.”
No bed space either
Considering the fact that the Lagos
State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, is closer than LUTH, a friend
took Olatunde there. Things didn’t go as planned either. At the Medical
Emergency in LASUTH, he was also rejected due to alleged lack of bed
spaces. The authorities informed him that all the beds had been occupied
by victims of a plane crash that occurred that same day. Again, he
didn’t get any medical assistance that his near-mortal wound demanded.
“They told me to look for a general
hospital, as all hands were on deck trying to save the survivours of the
plane crash that occurred that day that was the plane carrying the
corpse of Ondo State former Governor Olusegun Agagu.”
Obtain police report, or…
They referred him to the nearby Ikeja
General Hospital where the doctors also refused to treat him. This time,
they said he must obtain a police report explaining the wherewithal of
his wound.
“Although I was bleeding all over and
the floor was covered in my blood even as I writhing in indescribable
pains, the doctors said they could not treat me if I did not provide a
police report. When we saw that they wouldn’t accept our plea, my friend
had to go back to Somolu Police Station to get the document.”
While Olatunde is lucky to be alive to
tell his near-death experience, it’s not the case for 50-year- old
former Assistant Editor of Newswatch, Mr. Toyin Obadina, and 34-year-old Sunday Obunnekwe, who were shot in Ikorodu and Gbagada respectively in January.
Obadina was on his way home after a
rigorous day at work when gunmen in two Sport Utility Vehicles shot at
him on Parafa Street, Imota Road, Ikorodu, Lagos State.
Though he was shot twice in the stomach, the father of three did not die on the spot. Relating the events of that day to The PUNCH,
Biola, his widow, says, “He told us he was shot in the stomach and when
he attempted to run, one of the assailants shot him in the stomach a
second time before they fled.
He survived the surgery, but…
“My neighbour and I rushed him to
Ikorodu General Hospital. On getting there, we were told that the case
was severe and that they could not handle it. We took him to the
Gbagada General Hospital where we were also told that the case was also
too severe for their expertise. We finally took him to LASUTH,” the
grief-stricken woman explains.
Biola says despite the fact that they
were conveying him from one end of Lagos to the other, Obadina remained
conscious and was engaged in conversations with her. And though he came
out of the surgery alive, Obadina passed away in the early hours of the
following day.
Many are of the opinion that events that played out after the attack might have contributed to his death.
Rejected by three hospitals
Similarly, Sunday Obunneke, a trader who
was shot in the stomach at Brown Bus Stop in Oshodi, Lagos, last year,
was likely to have survived if he was not denied treatment by three
hospitals that day.
His fellow traders rushed him to LUTH
after fruitless efforts to get doctors to treat him at two private and
one general hospitals in the area. He died in his pool of blood at the
back seat of the car while he was about to be admitted into the
Accidents & Emergency Unit of the tertiary hospital.
The tragic experiences of Obadina and
Obunneke aptly describe the fate of many people that have been shot in
the country. Indeed, the chances of dying of a gunshot wound in Nigeria
are high, according to experts. A gunshot injury should be treated as an
emergency that it is, but the reverse is often the case in the country.
But it turns out that the trauma of gunshot victims is usually not
necessarily from their injuries but mainly due to the delay they face
when trying to access help.
Ill-equipped emergency units
The poor state of emergency services,
lack of experts to treat gunshot wounds even in the nation’s secondary
and tertiary hospitals, and the caveat of presentation of a police
report, are factors that jeopardise victims’ survival.
When this happens, relatives and
sympathisers would continue to whisk victims who have been shot from one
hospital to the other in search of a sympathetic ear. While about four
out of five people who have been shot in places other than the head
survive in the United States of America and many countries in Europe, it
is estimated that only one out of five gunshot victims survive in
Nigeria.
For some hospitals, a gunshot injury is
too complicated and expensive a wound to treat. So, they don’t even
bother to attend to victims. Others fear that accepting victims of
gunshot could be an open invitation to the police to invade their
clinics; while others fear that accepting gunshot victims in their
hospitals may shoot up their mortality rate should the patient die in
the course of treatment.
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