Acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is grieving after the death of one of her 21-month-old twin sons, which she attributes to medical negligence at a hospital in Lagos.
Adichie and her family traveled from the United States to Nigeria for the holidays when her son, who was being treated for an undisclosed infection, died on Jan. 6—one day before he was scheduled to be transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for further care, the New York Times reports.
In a private WhatsApp message to family and close friends that later leaked online, Adichie alleged that an anesthesiologist at Lagos’s private Euracare Hospital administered a fatal overdose of a sedative to her child.
“Suddenly, our beautiful little boy was gone forever,” Adichie wrote. “It is like living your worst nightmare. I will never survive the loss of my child.”
Family representative Omawumi Ogbe confirmed Adichie’s account.
Adichie said her son initially had what seemed like a cold, which developed into a severe infection. After being treated at Atlantis Pediatric Hospital in Lagos, he was set for medical evacuation to Johns Hopkins. Doctors requested a lumbar puncture and MRI first, so Atlantis referred him to Euracare.
According to Adichie, her son’s father carried him into the hospital, where staff said he would need sedation for the MRI. She described seeing staff rush into the theater and learning that the anesthesiologist had given her son too much propofol, leaving him unresponsive before being quickly resuscitated.
“But suddenly Nkanu was on a ventilator, he was intubated and placed in the ICU,” she wrote. “The next thing I heard was that he had seizures. Cardiac arrest. All these had never happened before.”
“Some hours later, Nkanu was gone,” the writer added.
Adichie, whose second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the 2007 Women’s Prize for Fiction, accused the anesthesiologist of criminal negligence, saying he turned off her son’s oxygen and casually carried him to the theater, leaving it unclear when he became unresponsive.
Source: Acclaimed Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Calls Out Lagos Hospital After Toddler Son Dies
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