A pregnant woman, Sema’u Sani Labaran, has died in the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital in Kano over alleged delayed payment transaction as a result of the new Naira policy crisis.
Malam Bello Fancy, the late woman’s husband, claimed that the delay in bank transfer caused his wife’s death and that the doctors didn’t attend to her for more than three hours.
Recall that the Kano State Government had warned marketers, supermarkets and the public against rejecting old naira notes in the state, saying it would shut down and revoke the licence of any business enterprise found in the act.
However, some residents claimed that several organizations, notably hospitals that deal with emergencies and government-owned gas stations and retailers, have been rejecting the old notes.
Speaking to Freedom Radio as Reported by Daily Trust, Malam Fancy claimed that when his wife was about to give birth, he took her to the hospital, but that because there was no POS and the hospital refused his old naira notes, they asked him to transfer the money into their account instead.
The doctors on call reportedly didn’t touch his wife despite the fact that he transferred the money and got debited because they insisted on waiting until they could see the alert in their account, which took almost three hours.
“When they got the alert, the pains had already quadrupled and my wife was bleeding when she came into the hospital from our home. Even so, they didn’t approach her until they got the alert, which was three hours later.
“When they hospitalized her, they learned that she couldn’t give birth on her own and needed surgery. I consented and made the payment via transfer. The time it took for them to get the alert and operate on my wife was also delayed by an extra three hours. Shockingly, the baby was brought out dead and the mother also died.”
Dr. Rahila Garba, the hospital’s chief medical officer, refuted the allegations, saying the claim was not the true representation of the incident.
However, some hospital patients confirmed the incident, claiming that they also had issues with medical bill payment, which caused delays in receiving care.
Malam Ibrahim Abdullahi, spokesman of the state Hospital Management Board, speaking with City & Crime, said they got information about the incident and would begin investigation.
“We are not certain about the cause of the incident, we just got the information. But we have commenced an investigation into the matter,” he said.