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Help has come for some indigent patients at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), as a group of transport business owners, at the weeked donated an undisclosed amount said to be in millions with some items to them.
The Team Leader, Uber Lagos Partner Group, Mr. Seye Ola disclosed that a sum of N500,000 had already been expended on the discharge of two of such patients.
According to him, the group does not have a budget for the project because “it is ongoing and open, but however, a member has managed to raise over a N1 million in the last 24 hours for the course and we are ready to do more to reach out. ”
Among the nine critical cases at the hospital’s Surgical Emergency to benefit from the project was an unidentified accident victim who has been unconscious since December 7, 2016, when he was brought into the hospital from an accident scene around Abeokuta Expressway.
The Social Welfare Officer at the hospital, Mr. Remi Lawal, who led the group on tour of some wards, noted that the hospital had been responsible for expenses of such patients.
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In the case of the unconscious and unidentified man, Lawal said, “We have been accountable for his medication and other expenses since his admission, we cannot trace any relative yet.”
Though the hospital management did not disclose the total number of indigent patients, The Guardian gathered that they were well over 10 at the Surgical Emergency and the Bola Tinubu (BT) Orthopaedic Male Wards.
Apart from the case of a mother of five, who lost two children in an accident at her Mile 12 shop, and pleading for support for surgery for the third child, who survived the incident, a few other indigent patients,who have been discharged but could not offset their bills were part of the benefactors.
One of such cases was that of a male patient in the BT Orthopaedic Ward, who The Guardian learnt has been on admission for almost 50 days with a bill of over N250,000 and still needed urgent items.
The Guardian learnt that many of these indigent patients, who needed surgeries and other forms of treatments, were unable to pay for tests, CT scans and X-rays and due to the breakdown of such facilities at the hospitals, management could not pay for them to run these tests outside the premises.
Reacting to the breakdown of these facilities the Chief Medical Director, LASUTH, Dr. Wale Oke, said the hospital has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a group of consultants and companies such as Philips to operate the BT diagnostic Cenre, which houses most of these facilities.
While commending, the Uber Lagos Partners Group, Oke appealed to other groups to emulate its kind gesture as government alone cannot solve the country’s healthcare challenges.
