When Hospitals Fail, Hope Bleeds: A Nation’s Silent Cry Over Lives Lost

R. M. Adisa
Watching Orobo’s video about that young, gifted, and promising musician broke something deep in me. It wasn’t just grief, it was disappointment layered upon anger, and anger resting on a long history of neglect. How does a human being survive a snake bite long enough to reach a hospital, only to die there because the hospital “cannot attend to it”? If a public secondary hospital cannot treat a common emergency like snake bite, then what exactly qualifies it to be called a hospital? Why does it exist?

What hurts more is that this failure is not limited to public hospitals. Many private hospitals are no better. Just last month, while I was in a private hospital in Ilorin, I overheard nurses discussing a snake bite victim who had been brought in, only to be referred elsewhere because they didn’t have anti-snake venom. When I asked why, they said it expires easily and loses potency quickly. I asked again, why don’t you have proper preservation equipment? Silence. No answer.

So, what are we really running here? Clinics for malaria and wound dressing only? Is that the limit of our medical ambition?
For how long will Nigerians continue to suffer while basic infrastructure remains undeveloped? I have been to Malaysia and discovered something that shocked me deeply: the entire country has essentially eliminated malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Malaria is no longer a common fear there. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, malaria is treated like a permanent destiny rather than a problem to be solved. We have been trying to roll back malaria for years, despite huge budgets on it.
What makes this pain even harder to bear is the hypocrisy of leadership. If our leaders cannot receive their own treatment in Nigeria, the least they can do is fix the system for us who have no alternative. Even our so-called Teaching Hospitals are failing the meaning of their name. How does a Teaching Hospital ask a patient’s family to go outside the hospital to source oxygen? Or asking you to go kilometers away do a basic laboratory test, which can’t be done in a teaching hospital. I experienced these personally. It is humiliating. It is dangerous. It is painful.
Why all these deficiencies and endless tragedies? Recently, it was in the news that a Grade A private hospital allegedly lost Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son due to negligence. They allege the child was denied oxygen and excessively sedated, leading to cardiac arrest. She has taken it up with the hospital. Similarly, a recent case in Kano where a pair of surgical scissors was forgotten inside a housewife stomach during surgery, leading to four months of severe pain and her eventual death. Though, the Kano State Hospitals Management Board said it had suspended three personnel directly involved in the case from clinical activities with immediate effect, and has referred the case for further investigation and disciplinary action, but can the dead come back? These are not stories from a war zone. These are things happening in hospitals, places meant to save lives. These deaths are acts of failure. Nigerians have suffered enough.
Enough of empty promises from one government to another. Credit to the Tinubu government, following the outcry, the health minister has admitted "systemic challenges" and announced the creation of a national task force on "clinical governance and patient safety" to improve the quality of care and patient safety. Just as this government resolved the years long ASUU crisis, there's a need to focus on the medical issues too.
Nigeria needs practical health reforms: enforce mandatory emergency supplies in all hospitals, create centralized medical storage with proper preservation, and impose strict penalties for medical negligence. Teaching hospitals must be prioritized and fully funded, while stronger public health prevention programs reduce disease burden. Leaders should lead by example by using and investing in local hospitals to restore trust and accountability.
These deaths are not meant to happen. They should not happen. And they must not continue to happen.
Hospitals should not be places where hope goes to die.
Nigeria deserves better.
And Nigerians cannot keep paying with their lives.