A 51-year-old medical doctor on Wednesday became the first health worker in Nigeria to die of COVID-19 after he contracted the virus from a patient he had treated.
The doctor, who died at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, was rushed to the facility on Monday after attempting to manage a COVID-19 patient in a private hospital in Lagos.
The Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee of the hospital, Prof Wasiu Adeyemo, said the doctor was not a staff of the hospital but was rushed to the facility after he showed symptoms of the disease.
“The doctor is not a LUTH staff; he was a private practitioner, though he trained in LUTH some 18, 20 years ago. I remember I met him, I know him, he left LUTH around 2002. One of his classmates called me that he has some issues in his private hospital, so I asked that he should be brought to LUTH. He was COVID-19 positive, we started him on drugs but unfortunately, he died this morning (Wednesday),” Adeyemo said.
We gathered that he contracted the virus while administering treatment on an infected patient.
