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Death of Ebonyi Siamese twins sparks row
NKIRU OKEKE, Enugu and KENNETH OFOMA, Abakaliki
A
war of words has ensued between the authorities of Okposi local government in
Ebonyi State and the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu,
following the death of the Ebonyi Siamese twins last Friday at the hospital.
The twins were born at the General
Hospital, Okposi last Tuesday and transferred to the Ebonyi State Teaching
University Hospital (EBSUTH) and subsequently to UNTH.
UNTH authorities, however, said an autopsy
would be performed this week to determine cause of death.
Chairman of Okposi council area, Mr. Amos
Ibere, who played a prominent role in getting the babies and their 33-year-old
widowed mother (Mrs. Happiness Oluma Ajah) to UNTH, accused the hospital of
lacking in requisite equipment to cater for such cases.
Mr. Ibere who spoke with some journalists
in Abakaliki, called that there were no incubators to keep the babies at the
hospitals in Enugu and Abakaliki.
He said the twins required special
incubators to accommodate them, which he claimed were not available at the
hospitals.
The council chairman said both hospitals
had the required personnel and did all they could to save the lives of the
babies.
"The problem we have both at UNTH and
EBSUTH is lack of equipment from the way they handled the children, I don’t in
any way see that as the cause of their death. But rather, I don’t think they
have enough equipment. For instance, we were looking for incubators to keep the
children, we didn’t see," he explained.
Ibere said when he visited the hospital
last Friday, he met the conjoined twins in good condition, and was therefore
shocked when he was informed on Saturday that the babies died on same Friday
night.
He stated that he could not say
specifically what was the cause of death, adding that he was still waiting for
the result of an autopsy which he claimed was carried out on Monday.
The council boss stated that since the
birth of the female twins by the widow, who hails from Umuakuma, in Okposi local
government area, he had been visiting the UNTH daily besides paying the hospital
deposits.
He decried the state of equipment in
Nigerian hospitals generally and called on government to do something about the
situation.
He specifically appealed to Ebonyi State
government to equip its teaching hospital, stressing that the hospital had all
the experts to handle the Siamese twins, but had to transfer them to Enugu due
to lack of equipment.
But the Head Paediatric Surgeon at UNTH,
Dr. Christopher Amah, told Daily Champion yesterday that the twins’ death
could have been caused by other factors.
The surgeon said he suspected that their
death could be attributed to their low weight and the nature of their delivery,
adding that it was not done through Caesarian.
According to him, "their weight was 2.9
kilogrammes, that means that each of them was about 1.4 kilos. Also, there is no
way you can rule out the injuries they sustained both seen and unseen, during
delivery. You know we have not done any test to really find out the damage that
was done during delivery."
"The two lower limbs of one of the twins
were blue, that means that the blood supply to them was compromised due to
vascular injury, but I won’t say that it caused the death because it was getting
improved, as the blue colouration was disappearing," he added.
Narrating the last moments of the twins,
Dr. Amah said he observed when he came to the ward last Friday around 6.00 p.m.
that nurses were trying to resuscitate them and he helped in doing that before
he left for the theatre to attend to another patients.
Unfortunately, according to him one of the
twins died around 7.14 p.m. on that day, while the second twin gave up about
7.24 p.m. same day.
Dr. Amah said autopsy will be carried out
on the corpses at the institution’s mortuary to confirm cause of death.
He said the delay in carrying out the
autopsy was due to an examination currently going on at the pathology department
of the hospital.
"At the end of the examination, which may last till
Thursday (tomorrow) or Friday of this week, an autopsy will be carried out on
the corpses to determine the cause of death and nature of the union. It seems
they shared one heart, but that couldn’t have killed them," he said.
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