71 dead as Hospitals scramble to contain carnage

Officials at National Hospital scrambled Monday afternoon to compile list of possibly hundreds of casualties in the wake of a blast at a bus station at Nyanya, on Abuja’s border with Nasarawa state. It was among the nine hospitals which received casualties evacuated from the site of the blast, which went off around 6.30 am […]

Officials at National Hospital scrambled Monday afternoon to compile list of possibly hundreds of casualties in the wake of a blast at a bus station at Nyanya, on Abuja’s border with Nasarawa state.

It was among the nine hospitals which received casualties evacuated from the site of the blast, which went off around 6.30 am as Monday morning traffic peaked.

Its newly built trauma centre is yet to open to public use, and NHA’s capacity for trauma is limited to six beds.

But in the wake of the blast, doctors set up a triage area in the accident & emergency unit to attend to dozens of injured.

Only a handful of patients had access to beds. Some were in chairs, others on the floor of the A&E unit, as trauma personnel worked to contain their numbers and file documentation.

Hours after, the lead trauma specialist assigns a nurse to verify documentation on each patient.
Some 78 patients were evacuated to the hospital, according to preliminary figures—27 admitted into wards, 14 burnt bodies sent to the mortuary.

Those figures were initially released to National Emergency Management Agencies before the hospital’s information unit clammed up about releasing statistics and insisted NHA doctors needed to first contain the patients.

“More people are still being brought in,” a hospital staff told officials of State Security Service. “We don’t have time to compile numbers now. Our priority is for the doctors to save lives first.”

NEMA later released its compilation of 71 dead and 127 injured from nine hospitals between Abuja and Nasarawa states.

In its breakdown, Abuja Clinic took in four injured, no dead; Nyanya General Hospital, about two minutes walk from the scene of the blast, took in 11 injured and no dead.

Customs Hospital at Karu received 14 injured and one dead. Asokoro hospital took in 25 injured and 27 dead; Maitama Hospital received 27 injured and 14 dead.

Wuse General  Hospital took in 10 injured and 15 dead; National Hospital received 25 injured and 14 dead. Garki Hospital took one injured patient and no dead. Medical Centre, Mararaba took in seven injured and no dead.

NHA’s scramble to manage information kept many relatives uninformed about their loved ones.
Ngozi Iloha, 40, mother of three, couldn’t get access to her husband—a staff of Abuja Urban Mass Transit Company—even after a hospital worker answered three calls she made to her husband’s phone.
“I called three times. He wasn’t answering. The fourth time, a woman answered and said my husband is at National Hospital.”
“But they didn’t allow me reach him,” she said, after reaching the hospital. “I just saw his face.”
Only one survivor Chima Okere went to Garki Hospital, after his boss had him evacuated from Wuse General Hospital, which was overwhelmed with casualties.
Okere, who works at a private firm around Utako, was on one of the El-Rufai buses ready to drive through the Nyanya park gates before the explosion occurred.
He said he sighted two hummer buses near the gates and wondered what they were doing.
“Before we moved toward the road, there was an explosion,” he said from his hospital bed at Garki.
He survived with a gash to the back of his head. “My head was torn. I managed to get off the bus and used my shirt to tie my head. My shirt, trousers and singlet are all red.”
Doctors who treated him said he was fit for discharge later Monday but after a skull x-ray to ascertain extent of damage.
“This is the sort of injury called ‘walking wounded’,” said the hospital’s chief, Dr Elijah Miner, noting such patients may sustain injuries not immediately obvious but equally life  threatening.