CITIZENS COMPASS —The University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) , Enugu, has continued to detain the corpse of Mrs Janet Nwaosu one year after she died in the hospital following alleged human errors on the part of its doctors. 

Apart from the errors, the hospital management was said to have denied Janet’s family, access to her corpse for the past one year.

Recall that the family of the late Romanus Nwaosu of Amaeta village in Mgbowo, Awgu Local Government of Area Enugu State had accused one Dr Chibuoke and a nurse of killing their mother, Mrs Janet, who was on admission at the UNTH on October 18, 2022.

The family claimed that the said doctor (Chibuoke) and the nurse injected their mother with a drug that killed her less than five minutes after the injection, without theur  consent.

According to the family, the accused health practitioners were not the ones assigned to take care of the deceased at the hospital when they injected the drug that killed her.

However, ovee a year after the incident, the Chief Medical Director of the teaching hospital, Dr Obinna Onodugo, has refused to release the body of late Janet because, according to him, one of the children of the deceased, “had maliciously broken a glass window in the hospital” after the alleged killing of their mother.

Meanwhile, Punch gathered that despite paying all necessary charges, the CMD was said to have given an order that no member of the family should be allowed to see the corpse of their mother in the past one year.

The deceased’s daughter, Miss Augustina Nwaosu, told Punch on Wednesday that the hospital management has been dragging the family from one police formation to another. Augustina was the one taking care of her mother before the unfortunate alleged manslaughter.

She lamented that instead of showing remorse for killing her mother, the CMD, Dr Onodugo, invited the police to arrest her for complaining and demanding justice.

Narrating how the CMD had been using the police to intimidate and torment her family in the last one year, and telling them that he will make life miserable for them for daring to complain about the incident, Augustina appealed to Nigerians and human rights organisations to come to their aid.

She noted that the former Chairman of Association of Resident Doctors, (ARD) , UNTH, one Dr Jide Uzoigwe, had told her family that they will continue to spend their money while the hospital will continue to frustrate their efforts at every police investigation in the matter.

She averred that whenever management of the UNTH feels that the police are not buying their false narratives about what happened, they will bribe investigation police officers, pretend to be seeking peaceful resolution, while the UNTH management will arrest members of the family using policemen from another formation.

At press time, efforts to reach the hospital for its own side of the story were unsuccessful.

–The PUNCH