How Medical Errors, Negligence Led To Deaths Of Our Loved Ones – Bereaved Families

Doctors explain why blunders persist, lawyers say negligence actionable  |  One in every 10 patients harmed while receiving health care – WHO 

Medical errors and negligent behaviour have become increasingly visible in Nigeria, stirring public outrage and raising concerns about the safety and accountability of the country’s healthcare system.

While incidents of wrong diagnoses, surgical mistakes, delayed treatment, poor post-operative care and alleged misconduct by health workers have long existed, social media has amplified these cases, bringing previously unheard-of stories to national attention.

From surgical instruments forgotten in the body to fatal medication errors and failures in monitoring patients, many families have continued to share painful accounts of loved ones who entered hospitals seeking help but never returned home.

Some have taken to social media to recount harrowing experiences of alleged medical negligence in hospitals across the country, following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 21-month-old son, Nkanu, in a private hospital in Lagos.

In a post shared by Nafiu Muhammad (@nafiumohammad) on X, credited to Abubakar Muhammed, the family narrated the circumstances surrounding Aishatu Umar’s death.

According to the post, Aisha had undergone surgery at the Abubakar Imam Urology Centre in September 2025  but continued to experience severe abdominal pain for months.

The tweet read: “The woman you see here is Aishatu Umar. She was a sister-in-law of mine. She passed away yesterday around 1:00 AM. She is survived by her husband and five children.

“Living in Kano, she fell ill a few months ago and underwent surgery at the Abubakar Imam Urology Centre in September, following the surgery. She suffered from severe abdominal pain. Whenever she went back to the hospital, she was only given pain relievers. She suffered this pain for four months.

“Just two days ago, tests and scans were finally conducted, revealing that a pair of scissors had been left inside her body during the September operation. Efforts were being made to perform a corrective surgery yesterday, but her time had run out, and she passed away.

“Is this not pure negligence? Truly, every soul has its appointed time, but how can professional doctors forget scissors inside a patient?”

The post said such incidents tarnish the reputation of healthcare workers and health authorities.

It called on the Kano State Government and health regulatory bodies to investigate the matter and take punitive actions.

“We demand justice for Aishatu Umar,” he said.

Also on X, Dr Joe Abah (@drjoeAbah) revealed how he avoided a potentially unnecessary surgery.

He said, “A private hospital in Abuja said I needed surgery and was trying to pressure me to do it with them immediately. I wasn’t sure, and my family wasn’t comfortable.

“My Madam reminded me that in the UK, there is a mandatory cooling-off period of 14 days between when you are told that you need surgery and when you actually have it, unless it’s a life-threatening emergency. The cooling-off period gives you time to decide whether to proceed.

“The surgeon asked me whether I was afraid of him, and I said, ’No, it’s the anaesthetist I am afraid of.’ He asked why, and I said that I had just heard too many stories.

“To the obvious disappointment of his clinic manager, who had already started to process HMO approvals, I decided to get other opinions. Getting a second opinion elsewhere and a third opinion abroad, it turned out that I didn’t need any surgery at all!”

On Facebook, Yahaya Kana Ismaila, posting on Nasarawa Mirror, shared his story titled ‘Quack Hospital Killed My Mother’.

He wrote: “Reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s harrowing account of her son’s death reopened memories of the quackery and negligence that killed my mother.

“Anyone who knew her, my mother, knew she was a strong woman. In my entire adult life, my mother had been to the hospital only once, to give birth to her last-born, even at an age considered medically unconventional. I don’t remember her going to the hospital to complain of illness until, well, the day a quack hospital killed her.

“They said she had a Hernia, which, by all standards, is a routine procedure. The procedure was reported to be successful. But it was her post-operative care, said to be badly handled, that has left us without a mother.”

Ismaila said that confronting the hospital would not have brought his mother back; letting such institutions get away with this level of unprofessionalism only emboldens them, adding that many of the so-called private hospitals have become morgues.

“People walk in by themselves and are returned home as corpses. Yet nobody does anything even when it’s very glaring that these patients were hurried along to their deaths by negligence and quackery,” he said.

He went further to narrate an incident that happened in a hospital in Lafia.

“Ours is just one story. I remember when a hospital in Lafia almost killed my brother, Alhaji Faruk Abdullahi’s wife and the story we were told recently by Haruna Ibrahim Abaji about the circumstances surrounding his own mother’s death. It’s disheartening. Worse is, these hospitals will still charge you after killing your loved ones.

‘‘Here’s why we must rethink our culture of redress and accountability. At the moment, it is deeply damaged, aided by a warped religiosity. Victims are told to ‘leave it to God,’ as though demanding accountability is an act of blasphemy. Quack doctors understand this perfectly and thrive on it,” he said.

Another Facebook user, Chinyere Onwenu, also recounted her family’s painful loss.

“Exactly how they killed my dad with (God knows which) injections they injected inside my dad’s IV (intravenous). Mind you, he went in on a motorcycle because of a stomach ache that could be a stomach upset because of what he ate or acid reflux or something of that nature! Up until today, they never told us what type of injection(s) they used,” he said.

Similarly, Josephine Effah-Chukwuma on Facebook shared a traumatic account of her husband’s death.

“This is a TRIGGER for me. OH GOD! The anaesthesiologist who set up my husband’s central line on Friday, 2 April 2021, at Marcelle Ruth Cancer Centre, where we were referred from Euracare, strolled in that evening with his girlfriend to set it up. My daughter and I were watching him. I was afraid.

“The casual way he walked in, not dressed professionally in the hospital white, alarmed me. But he came in with one of the nurses, who introduced him as the one to set the central line. I watched helplessly as he set up the central line. On finishing, he left.

‘‘I noticed almost immediately that the side of his neck got swollen, and by morning, his voice had changed. Like his vocal cord had been punctured. I called the nurses on duty to their attention, and they said there was no problem. That Saturday, April 3rd, 2021, Innocent died.”

Fashion designer Toyin Lawani also narrated a lengthy near-death experience at Euracare Hospital.

She wrote: “You will spend close to N100m in a hospital, and they will still mismanage your health. They thought I was joking when I said I was going to sue. But I said they should just wait, when I’m stronger.

“I kept asking myself why I had my spine surgery implant in Nigeria. To this day, I still can’t speak or walk well. I had complications, started bleeding in my lungs, and had to be taken back into the theatre the next day for re-operation. Before I knew it, I stopped breathing. They had to puncture my lungs and they destroyed my vocal cords.

“I remember a night I was given two injections, and my heart seized. I couldn’t breathe. @prettydammy2 @segun_wealth witnessed her hubby had to threaten them. The trauma I faced in that hospital for months I still can’t get over it till date. I’m still in and out of the hospital to date due to this.

“They won’t even care if it’s their mismanagement; you will still pay.”

The Facebook page, Society Through a Stethoscope, also lamented the recent death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dr Ivara Esege’s 21-month-old son, calling for compassion, restraint and seriousness.

“Beyond the immeasurable personal loss, the details described raise grave clinical and ethical concerns. Paediatric anaesthesia is one of the most safety-critical areas of medicine. Continuous monitoring, airway protection, and vigilant post-sedation care are not optional; they are foundational standards of practice worldwide.

“If the reported failures in monitoring, oxygenation, and response are accurate, this would represent not an unavoidable complication, but a profound breach of patient safety. No parent should seek care for a child and leave with irreversible grief. This moment calls not for speculation, but for transparent investigation, accountability, and meaningful reform, so that no other family endures such a loss.”

The rising number of complaints has intensified public pressure on health authorities, professional councils, and state governments to address concerns about negligence, lack of accountability, and overall quality of care in medical facilities across the country.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than three million deaths occur annually due to preventable medical harm.

Data from WHO shows that one in every 10 patients is harmed while receiving health care, with the toll disproportionately higher in low- and middle-income countries where up to four in every 100 patients die from unsafe care.

The global health body’s report on patient safety revealed that at least 50 per cent of all patient harm is preventable. Half of this avoidable harm is linked to medication errors.

The situation, it said, is even more dire in primary and ambulatory care settings, with four in 10 patients experiencing harm, 80 per cent of which could be avoided.

The report highlighted a long list of common medical errors leading to severe and sometimes fatal consequences. These include medication errors, affecting one in every 30 patients, unsafe surgeries, responsible for 10 per cent of preventable harm, health care-associated infections, which prolong hospital stays and increase deaths, and diagnostic errors, present in up to 20 per cent of clinical encounters.

Others include patient falls, the most frequent hospital accidents, venous thromboembolism (blood clots), accounting for a third of hospitalisation complications, pressure ulcers, affecting more than one in 10 adult inpatients, unsafe blood transfusions, leading to severe adverse reactions, patient misidentification, causing catastrophic outcomes like wrong-site surgery, and unsafe injection practices, linked to millions of infections globally.

WHO says that these adverse events are not isolated mistakes but often the result of systemic failures, including poor staffing, inadequate processes, communication breakdowns, lack of patient engagement, faulty technology, and weak policy environments.

Addressing concerns over specific cases, such as the recent incident in Kano where a scissors was reportedly left inside a patient after surgery, a lecturer and consultant pathologist at Lagos State University College of Medicine/Teaching Hospital, Prof. Francis Faduyile, told LEADERSHIP Weekend that multiple factors could be involved.

Prof. Faduyile emphasised that human error is inevitable but can be mitigated through systemic checks.

“So in this regard, it’s possible because once a machine does not do something, there are bound to be errors from time to time. We must have enough guidelines or enough plans to guard against such errors,” he said.

Prof. Faduyile’s comments underscore the importance of both systemic safeguards and realistic public perception.

He said that while errors are inevitable, robust protocols exist to minimise their occurrence.

Also, a public health expert, Dr Ozy Okonokhua, attributed medical negligence and errors in the country to a combination of human and systemic factors, including overburdened healthcare workers, infrastructural deficiencies, and delayed patient presentations.

Dr. Okonokhua explained that the shortage of medical personnel in the country, mainly due to migration (referred to as the “japa syndrome) has left healthcare providers attending to far more patients than they can safely manage.

“So you find one medical professional attending to more people than he or she should attend to. So he’s overburdened and, you know, because of the burnout, you can’t get the best out of such people anymore.

“If a doctor has been seeing patients from morning till 5 p.m., you can understand the wear and tear on that person, and his judgement is going to be impaired because he’s been overworked and overburdened. That’s also one factor,” he said.

Dr. Okonokhua further highlighted systemic deficiencies that limit healthcare providers’ ability to perform optimally. “Another factor is systemic challenges or systemic deficiencies where the system does not even give room for the healthcare provider to exhibit his or her best judgement.”

He also pointed to inadequate infrastructure as a contributing factor.

“We have an infrastructure deficiency situation where the structure that is used for rendering service is not up to par,” he said

Delayed patient presentation was another concern he raised, noting that late arrivals put healthcare providers under additional pressure.

“Sometimes, when you delay at home before bringing the case to the doctor’s table, the doctor is forced to work under pressure to get the best diagnosis.”

Dr Okonokhua emphasised that human errors are inevitable, but the consequences in healthcare are far more serious than in other professions.

“In every profession, there are errors of judgement, but they don’t lead to loss of lives. It’s not so pronounced. But for the healthcare provider, an error can lead to the loss of lives. So it is more pronounced, and it makes more headlines than the errors made by other professionals.”

He further told LEADERSHIP Weekend that addressing Nigeria’s medical errors will require systemic reforms, proper staffing, infrastructure improvement, and realistic workloads for healthcare professionals.

According to the WHO, improving patient safety requires a shift from blaming individuals to fixing system-wide weaknesses.

The organisation called for strong leadership commitment, safer clinical environments, better teamwork and communication, competency development for health workers, and active involvement of patients and their families.

Medical Negligence Is Actionable – Lawyers

Some lawyers who spoke to LEADERSHIP Weekend said that negligence by a hospital or medical personnel is actionable.

According to them, victims’ families and relatives have two options when faced with this type of situation.

For a legal practitioner, Chief Nwabueze Nwosu, the family can pursue either a civil or an administrative option.

He also blamed the government for failing to provide adequate health facilities.

He said, “In this type of matter, there is a civil option, and there is an administrative option. The civil option stems from the fact that medical personnel owe a duty of care to the patient to ensure they provide professional care. Hence, the patient emerges without any problems.

“But in a case where it is shown that they were negligent, it is actionable in law under the civil procedure law. Where it is shown that it’s an act of negligence, the family or the relation has the right to go to court to sue the hospital and the personnel involved for negligence.

“The court action comes with a claim and whatever reliefs they may seek in the suit. In most cases, it comes with a monetary claim. Then, on the other side of it, there is the administrative side. They can be reported to their professional body, in this case, the Nigerian Medical and Dental Association,  for their carelessness, so that they can be sanctioned.”

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr Abdul Balogun, called for a declaration of a state of emergency in the health sector.

According to him, public health institutions are a no-go area for anyone who loves their life, but unfortunately, the poor masses have no much choice.

He advised those who have suffered negligence by the hospital or medical personnel to seek redress in court or with the relevant regulatory agency.

He said, “The option left to the family or relations of victims of medical negligence is to seek redress in court. That is why, when treating a patient in the hospital, a lot of care needs to be taken to ensure that the right drugs, injections, and even tests are prescribed or recommended.

‘‘You cannot just take a life due to your negligence and expect to go free. The family will go to court and file claims; the victim is their loved one, who sometimes may even be the breadwinner.”