On Tuesday, a doctor and other staff at the Alimosho General Hospital in Igando, Lagos, extorted well-meaning helpers and family members of one Mustapha Jelili, a motorcycle rider involved in an accident along Isheri-Idimu.
Jelili was first taken in a tricycle from the accident spot to a private hospital, but upon rejection, he was helped to Alimosho Hospital by three men at about 3 pm.
“It was here that a ridiculous ‘first aid supplies’ list was handed by a doctor to one of us to purchase before Jelili could be stabilised,” one of the men told FIJ. “At this point, the victim’s relatives had called his phone repeatedly and had been directed to the hospital.”
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The doctor, identified by staff as Bishop, included Nylon, Transpore plaster, cotton wool and paracetamol in the first aid list. Everything would cost N6,416.40. However, after paying N7,000 and expecting at least N450 as change, one of Jelili’s helpers got a receipt indicating that he had only paid N6,416.40 in cash and had no change due, even when there was no way he could have given them N1 and 40 kobo in cash.
Gideon Imoluame and Kudirat Olanrewaju, the two employees at the dispensary, ignored the man when he asked for change.
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In front of the hospital where the first aid was to be administered in a tricycle as Bishop refused to have the patient stretchered in, a business deal was being struck between the doctor, a gateman and an unknown private ambulance driver.
Bishop had told the men who accompanied Jelili that he would need to transfer the patient to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in a private ambulance he would help hire.
An FIJ reporter who monitored the proceeding heard Bishop ask the gateman about the ambulance driver. When the latter said the driver had gone, Bishop responded, “Why you go let am go na? You don make me lose this business.“
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He then attended to the semi-conscious patient before he was wheeled in a wheelchair into a corridor upon his family’s arrival.
His family was later asked to purchase other drugs, including intravenous syringes. Everything would cost N9,320. Our reporter watched a nurse stuff some of the syringes, which were obviously too many, into her pockets during the first aid process. The doctor had used only one of the tiny syringes and gave the rest to her.
Moments after first aid was administered, a man said he was a private ambulance operator and that he would convey the patient to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) for N25,000.
Bishop would later ask the victim’s relatives to negotiate with the ambulance driver who eventually agreed to N15,000. Bishop’s business was back.
Jelili was conveyed to LASUTH around 6pm, after over N30,000 was incurred as cost of ‘first aid’.
FIJ placed several calls to the telephone number on the hospital’s website but they were not answered. A text message sent to the number was also not responded to.
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