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Contrary to a media report, Mojol Hospital, a private medical facility in Shasha area of Akowonjo, Lagos, has denied detaining Blessing Bassey, a nursing mother, over N95,000 debt. The debt was said to have been incurred by the nursing mother after she was delivered of a baby through caesarian section in the hospital.
But the hospital’s administrative officer, Salami Akindayo, told newsmen in Lagos that one of the national dailies (not Platform Times), which had reported the incident on October 2 and 5, merely published with malicious intent – not to inform the public. He stated that the report was both untrue and malicious. Narrating series of events that culminated in the nursing mother’s case, Akindayo, who said he was around when Bassey was brought into the hospital by 3 a.m. on March 6 in a coma. She was brought into the facility by her neighbours after she had been rejected by the private hospital where she registered for antenatal care and taken to Igando General Hospital where she was referred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) – all in the night.
The hospital management said she was admitted and treated immediately without asking for payment because the private facility operates by a guiding rule that prioritises saving of lives first before asking for payment. This, the hospital said, explains why the facility is popular among the people who daily throng the one-storey building for medical services of all sorts.
“She was seven months pregnant and had been taken to Igando general hospital before. It was Igando general hospital that stabilised her after spending four hours there. When she was brought in by her neighbours, she was still in a coma. The doctor checked if the baby was still breathing. On discovering that she was still breathing, she was operated upon in a coma and was not on anesthesia because we didn’t know the level of her coma. The operation was successful and the baby is alive.
“After delivery, the mother was still in a coma until March 12. Although the neighbours who brought her said they didn’t have money to pay, we took her in and saved her first without collecting any payment before service. Because the baby was just 7 months, we had to spend a lot of money running generator 24 hours per day for over a month that the baby was in the incubator,” Akindayo said.
He disclosed that the bill was originally N350,000 but was slashed to N250,000 when the hospital management realised that the husband could not afford the payment. The first installment made by the husband was N15, 000. Ever since, the husband had been making payments of N2,000, 3,000, N5,000, N13,000 and so on, Akindayo said. He added Bassey had to be moved to another ward because she was constantly quarreling with other patients. “Mojol hospital wants to state that the publication was untrue. The hospital had even written to some organisations, including Ohanaeze group to help discharge Bassey. The hospital usually saves lives first before asking for payment,” he said.
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