Rising cases of maternal deaths unsettle FMC Asaba

No fewer than 13 pregnant women have allegedly lost their lives at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Asaba, a situation that has unsettled the medical facility in recent times.

Sources, however, said the hospital’s management has resorted to prayers to salvage the situation. Its Acting Medical Director, Dr. Victor Osiatuma, said the prayer session was required to ensure and enhance the job of the workers, the doctors and the patients.

He insisted that rising cases of maternal deaths in the hospital was not the result of negligence, stressing that as medical practitioners, death of patients was part of the practice, especially as death is inevitable.

Checks revealed that the recent alleged killing of one Rita Uchegbuego was not the only calamity bedeviling the hospital, but 13 other pregnant women had died at the hospital.

One Jerome Kwamu, whose wife, Uzoamaka Kwamu delivered a set of triplets at the hospital through cesarean section accused the doctors of carelessness.
Kwamu and his wife, Uzoamaka had their first child 14 years ago, and were looking up to God for a second child when God blessed them with triplets.

According to Kwamu, “Prior to my wife’s delivery, she was admitted for two weeks at the FMC on January 30, 2017, she was taken into the theater for sectioning and was delivered of a set of triplets.

But one hour after the surgery, she began to experience excruciating pains in her stomach and was rushed back into the theatre for a second surgery and was wheeled out several minutes later in coma without care before she died.”

On the death of Uchebuego, efforts to get some of the persons indicted of negligence to speak proved abortive, but copies of the documents and affidavit deposed to by most of them in reply to queries issued to them by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) wherein they stated their extent of involvement were obtained.

Investigations revealed that the panel of enquiry constituted by Osiatuma, and chaired by a professor from the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Ife and a doctor from the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) slammed six months suspension on the consultant who handled Uchebuego’s antenatal care.