By Eric Tataw – Washington DC, USA, Thursday, April 30, 2020.
In the simplest term, patient abuse or neglect is any action or failure to act which causes unreasonable suffering, misery, or harm to the patient.
Abuse includes physically striking or sexually assaulting a patient. It also includes the intentional withholding of necessary food, physical care, and medical attention.
This is exactly what the Director of the Bamenda Regional Hospital, a state-run hospital in Bamenda, the capital city of Cameroon’s North West has done – gross neglect that killed one of his patients.
59-year-old Mamusang Sunday Fon was rushed to the Bamenda Regional Hospital on, Monday, April 27, 2020, and was poorly supervised by hospital staff to die.
Confirmed reports say upon Sunday Fon’s arrival at the hospital, the hospital’s Director, Dr. Denis Nsame Nforniwe immediately put him into an isolation room.
Sunday Fon who was domiciled in Ntaturu, Mankon in Bamenda was rushed to the hospital after he suffered a malaise from High Blood Pressure and other related illnesses.
Dr. Denis Nsame immediately ordered him to be isolated, accusing the patient of being infected by the novel COVID-19, family sources have told National Telegraph.
Sunday Fon was abandoned without any care, no medication, and no follow-up while on strict confinement within hospital premises, a close source to the Director has decried.
The patient has finally died, Thursday, April 30, 2020, sources confirmed, adding that authorities have ordered a grave be immediately dug for his burial.
Family members have challenged the decision, calling it a cover-up from “an incompetent” hospital team. to them, the Director literally killed their father.
No test was done to establish if it were COVID-19. Caregivers of the deceased, all family members were allowed to freely return home.
Allowing caregivers to return home is an indication that he didn’t die of the virus. Otherwise, why didn’t the hospital quarantine all that came in contact with Sunday Fon? family members have quizzed. The hospital is yet to react.
