A surgery to remove a tumour from a man at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) was delayed for several minutes on Saturday because of a missing document at the hospital’s laboratory, a doctor has revealed.

Afrah Mohammed, a house officer, had to sleep at the hospital to make preparations, including grouping and cross-matching blood samples for a surgery the following day.

“I took the sample and the form to the lab myself, begged them to make sure two units were ready before this morning. I went this morning to make sure it was ready. They assured me they had cross-matched,” Mohammed wrote.

But the blood could not be traced because a form was missing. 

“Patient was on the table. God, I was so angry,” she stated.

“I went to the lab and all they could say was ‘we can’t find the form’ very lackadaisically. I couldn’t fathom how my temper shot to the roof. I couldn’t understand what was happening.

“All I kept asking them was ‘so what do you want me to do now?’ They were looking at me… look for solution, these people were attending to other patients. Like I wasn’t even talking to them.”

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The officials doubted whether she brought the samples to the laboratory.

“That was when I told them to open their records, let’s see. And there it was. They used the sample number in their records to get the serum. It was actually there. The problem now was that the cross-matching form was missing,” the doctor stated.

“So the blood bottle number was also missing. How would they locate the blood in the blood bank? Mind you, patient was on the table. Madam now came to tell me they’ll have to cross-match again.; another 45 mins – one hour.”

Before it was found that the patient’s tumour could not be removed by surgery, she feared that her patient would bleed to death because of the delay.

When FIJ contacted Jos University Teaching Hospital for comments via phone, an official instructed that an email should be sent. JUTH was yet to respond to FIJ’s request for comment as of the time of publishing this report.

“It was not good news, but somehow, I was happy, because any bleeding on table would have been catastrophic. Little things like these can claim anyone in this country,” she concluded.