In an interview with TheNETng’s Joan Omionawele, son of the late Ras Kimono’s wife Efe Okedi shared the circumstances that led to his mother’s death.
Onome Akpobome said that she had only complained about a chest pain in the early hours of Sunday, and was taken to three hospitals which all refused to admit her.
He said: “On Saturday, we went to the beach for my uncle’s birthday. Nothing went wrong until about 2 a.m when she woke us up to change over because PHCN had brought the light, she then went upstairs and started complaining of chest pain. At this point, she started breathing awkwardly”.
“Her elder sister who is a nurse attended to her and gave her first aid but her breathing was still laboured so we decided to take her to the hospital. First, we went to (a hospital in) Ogba but the staff we saw were unresponsive. I was shocked to see their unconcerned countenance. When we saw that they were not ready to help us so we left and drove to (another hospital). A doctor saw her there, checked her pulse and said she was still breathing but that they had no facilities to treat her. So he referred us to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in Ikeja.
“When we got to LASUTH at about 4 am, they also wasted our time for over 40 minutes and by the time they were ready to treat her, we heard she had stopped breathing.
“The pain is worse for me because none of the three hospitals treated the case as an emergency. In fact, I have given up on Nigeria because they all had up to three hours to save my mum, how can over three hospitals in Lagos not have the right facility to treat breathing problems? – None of them even had a stretcher, I am just totally done with this country.”
Efe passed on Sunday, three months after Ras Kimono’s passing.
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