UCH CMD: We lost 18 patients to COVID-19

Jesse Otegbayo, the chief medical director, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, says the hospital recorded 18 fatalities out of the 159 COVID-19 patients it treated.

Otegbayo disclosed this on Friday in Ibadan, on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony of a new infectious disease centre at UCH, donated by the Josephus Foundation.

According to NAN, Otegbayo said some of the patients had underlying health conditions.

“From the last figure I saw, we have treated about 159 COVID-19 patients and 18 of them died,” he said.

“We have those mortalities because we take the sickest of the sick; the most severe cases are brought to the University College Hospital and that is the only place where they can be treated.

“We have some of them with comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, asthma and some other chronic lung diseases.

“Some of them have kidney failure that requires dialysis which is not available in many other places in Oyo state; that is why we recorded these mortalities at the UCH.”

According to the CMD, the newly constructed Chief Tunde Afolabi Infectious Disease Centre is a 20-bed state-of-the-art centre, and also the single largest donation the hospital has received since Nigeria recorded its first case of COVID-19.

“We will be taking care of patients with transmissible infections, which will include but not limited to people with coronavirus, Lassa fever, HIV and others,” Otegbayo said.

“It is an infectious disease centre with state-of-the-art hospital beds, multiparameter monitor for all the beds, a 60 KVA generator, CCTV for all the rooms and monitoring centre, nurses’ bay and doctors’ call rooms.”

In his remarks, Oladapo Afolabi, who represented the chairman of the Josephus Foundation, said the centre was built and donated to UCH to enhance its capability to fight infectious diseases like COVID-19.

Bashir Bello, the Oyo state commissioner for health, also commended the UCH for its commitment toward improving healthcare delivery in the state.

As of August 13, Oyo had recorded 31 coronavirus-related deaths out of a total of 2,935 confirmed cases.