One of the women leaders of the Internally Displaced Persons, Durumi camp, Garki Abuja has narrated how a pregnant mother was neglected to die at the Abuja National Hospital a few years ago.
Mrs Liyatu Ayuba dug up the incident while lamenting the situation at the camp where she has been since the demise of her husband in 2015.
In her narration, Ayuba said she eventually became a midwife in the camp following the rejection of their pregnant members in government hospitals.
According to her, she has so far helped in taking delivery of no fewer than 125 children in the camp.
Ayuba had told Daily Post in the camp that she was displaced from Borno State after the Boko Haram insurgents killed her husband six years ago.
She further narrated how the National Hospital, Abuja, and other government medical facilities had rejected their pregnant members, denying them access to medical care over their inability to pay bills.
Ayuba disclosed that a few years back, a lady in the camp who needed a cesarean section died in the National Hospital after they were unable to pay for the operation.
She said: “A few years ago, a lady came to this camp and she was 7 months pregnant. She came barefoot with only a wrapper and she didn’t have a bacha (hut) so she was squatting on another person’s own.”
“The next three days, she was in labour and we took her to the National Hospital in Abuja here and we were told to bring 100,000 but we told them that we do not have such money that they should please try and save her life.
“They said they can’t do anything, that we IDPs are disturbing them. That was how the woman and her baby died in the hospital. They even refused to release the corps for us because we could not pay,” Mrs Ayuba disclosed.
She said the disturbing developments angered her and pushed her into midwifery to save the lives of other women in the camp.
Mrs Ayuba said: “I learnt how to be a midwife from my grandmother. I started delivering babies on January 2, 2015, so from that year till date, I have delivered a total of 125 babies in this camp.”
She stated that she has been sensitizing households in the camp to embrace family planning due to a lack of funds to train the children.
“I have been telling them that people who have four to five children should do family planning because we are facing a lot in this camp, we are not collecting salary.
“And these children are not going to school and women keep getting pregnant. God will hold us responsible for the children that we are bringing to this world without training them,” Mrs Ayuba noted.