25-year-old orphan stranded in LUTH three months after surgery

A 25-year-old orphan, Adeniyi Onalaja, a generator repairer, has been stranded at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, for three months after undergoing a stomach surgery. Onalaja’s ordeal started when he was experiencing pain in the stomach and was referred from a hospital in Agbowa, Ikorodu, to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital on […]

A 25-year-old orphan, Adeniyi Onalaja, a generator repairer, has been stranded at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, for three months after undergoing a stomach surgery.

Onalaja’s ordeal started when he was experiencing pain in the stomach and was referred from a hospital in Agbowa, Ikorodu, to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital on April 4, 2019. Upon medical examination, he was advised to go for a CT-Scan, which showed that a tumour was growing in his stomach.

He was scheduled for an emergency surgery on April 10, 2019 after signing an undertaking that funds would be made available later.  There was, however, a complication as he could neither sleep nor eat, which made him undergo another surgery on April 23, 2019.

He has since then been a resident of Ward E6 in the hospital.

According to Onalaja, who hails from Ijebu-Ode, his father died in 2006, while his mother was also no longer alive. He said he was owing the hospital about N600,000 as expenses incurred from surgeries, admission, laundry and drugs.

The orphan said he had been living on the remnants of other patients on admission in the ward because he had nobody to assist him financially.  He expressed his readiness to fend for himself through his generator repair skills if he had the opportunity to leave the hospital.

He therefore, appealed to well-meaning Nigerians to help him out of his travail.