Uproar Over 'Stolen' Patient At Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital

There is disquiet in Kano over the mysterious disappearance of former staff of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Alhaji Ibrahim Isa Gama while on admission at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) as family members of the missing patient now hold the hospital responsible for the strange incident.

The search for the missing patient at the Malam Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital by the police has continued following the mounting pressure from his family members and other relations. The typhoid fever patient, Alhaji Ibrahim Isa Gama, a former staff of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), was reportedly 'stolen' while on admission at the hospital by unknown persons suspected to be members of a secret cult.

Since the patient was reported missing, his family members and several other relations from Katsina (the patient's state of origin) have turned Bompai police command in Kano their permanent abode, threatening to burn down the hospital if something was not done in earnest to unravel the circumstances surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the nearly 70-year-old patient.

The arrest by the police of eight suspects, all staff of the hospital, was on the strength of a statement wife of the missing patient had earlier given the police. All, except the principal suspect in the controversy, were later released on bail following intervention by top management staff of the hospital.

The principal suspect, Shehu Idris, who is a clinical attendant at the hospital, was refused bail by the police because he was indicted in the wife's statement. The wife was said to have accused Idris of having a 'hand' in her husband's disappearance from the hospital. The clinical attendant, according to her, was the one who suddenly came out from the hospital's male ward to ask the whereabouts of her husband when doctors were attending to patients at that moment.

Halima also alleged that it was Idris who was said to have removed the drip from her husband's hand in order to go and ease himself in the toilet and since then he had not returned. She further alleged at one particular time she saw Idris in a group discussing with some 'strange persons' and pointing directly at her husband. "Then, it did not occur to me my husband will disappear from the hospital", she said.

The wife had earlier in the week told our sister publication that at the very time the routine morning medical checkup was being carried out by doctors on duty "one tall man" (she was referring to the principal suspect) came out to ask her the whereabouts of her husband.

"That made me to quickly dash into the ward only to see a different sick person lying on my husband's admission bed receiving live oxygen; and since then, I became suspicious of the man", she said.

Sunday Trust also learnt from good authority that the suspect shot himself in the foot when he attempted to run away from the police command not long after he was brought in alongside seven other suspects from the hospital for interrogation, an action that was said to have made the police to deny the suspect bail for the belief that "the man must have something to hide in the case".

The wife had alleged that her husband was 'stolen' through the 'connivance of some staff' of the hospital. But authorities of the hospital through head of its public relations unit Aminu Inuwa swiftly denied the allegation, saying however that they were investigating the circumstance surrounding the incident.

Source: Sunday Trust