First Consultants Medical Centre, on Friday, October 10, 2014 finally spoke publicly after remaining somewhat mute after the first Ebola case in the country was discovered in their premises, indicting the Liberian ambassador to Nigeria for complicity over the index case of Ebola, Patrick Sawyer.
The center accused the ambassador to pressuring the hospital to discharge Sawyer when the hospital didn’t deem it fit, adding that the ambassador also threatened them with a lawsuit.
Vanguard reports that Benjamin Ohiaeri, the medical director of the medical outfit who spoke to newsmen in Lagos said that the ambassador threatened them saying that if the continued keeping Sawyer against his will, it was equal to kidnap and abuse of his human right, warning them that they were courting an international diplomatic row which is liable to result a law suit.
Ohaeri said: “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.”
Ohiaeri added that the late Sawyer began “unleashing” his bio-terror on the staff of the hospital after he was denied exit, which proved to be their greatest challenge, as he insisted he must leave the premises against a directive given by the hospital’s committee made up of himself (Ohiaeri) and two doctors who lost their lives to the virus, Ameyo Adadevoh and Amos Abaniwo.
“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,” Ohiarei said.
He continued: “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.”
