Nigeria's Patient 'Prisoners'
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nigerian patients held in hospital because they can’t pay their medical bills.
In March 2016, a young woman went into labour. She was rushed to a local, private hospital in south-east Nigeria where she gave birth by caesarean section. But when the hospital discovered this teenage mother didn’t have the money to pay for her treatment, she and her son were unable to leave. They remained there for 16 months – until the police arrived and released them.
This is not an isolated case. In Nigeria, very few health services are free of charge, and campaigners estimate that thousands have been detained in hospitals for failing to pay their bills. It’s become an increasingly high-profile issue – one couple have been awarded compensation after going through the courts.
For Assignment, Linda Pressly explores a widespread abuse – meeting victims, and the hospital managers attempting to manage their budgets in a health system under enormous pressure, where only 5% of Nigerians are covered by health insurance.
Producer: Josephine Casserly
(Photo: Ngozi Osegbo was awarded compensation by a court after she and her husband were detained in a hospital because they couldn't pay their medical bills. BBC PHOTO)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So this is a really surprising story from Nigeria. |
| 0:03.5 | It's about something many of us, unfortunately, will have experience of hospitals. |
| 0:09.0 | Josephine Casselli, BBC producer, came across this in an academic study. It's about patients who |
| 0:15.3 | aren't allowed to leave hospital because they're too poor to pay for the treatment they've had. |
| 0:20.3 | This apparently happens all over the world, but in Nigeria it's particularly widespread. |
| 0:26.0 | As we found out when we were working together with Chimesi Uchiaboo, a journalist with the BBC's |
| 0:31.0 | Igbo service in Lagos. I hope you'll be engaged and moved by |
| 0:35.4 | what you hear in the next half hour and if you are perhaps you'll have a moment to |
| 0:39.3 | rate us with your podcast provider. Please stay tuned. |
| 0:43.0 | 945. |
| 0:45.0 | Hello, is this Adijat? |
| 0:50.0 | Yes. |
| 0:51.0 | Are you still in the hospital? Yes, I'm still in the hospital? |
| 0:53.0 | Yes, I'm still in the hospital. |
| 0:55.0 | So they know enough to want me to |
| 0:58.0 | to agree on the hospital. |
| 1:00.0 | Hadajat Bashiru, a new mother of 25, tells us she can't leave the hospital until she pays her medical bill. |
| 1:11.0 | She talks to us from a ward in the government-run Lagos University Teaching Hospital. |
| 1:15.0 | I'm Linda Presley and in this week's assignment we investigate the widespread practice in Nigeria of detaining patients for days or weeks even months |
| 1:25.0 | after discharge. |
| 1:27.0 | Adijat has sickle cell anemia. She delivered her baby prematurely by Cesarean section, |
| 1:36.0 | but she developed a life-threatening infection and was transferred to the University Hospital after the birth. |
... |
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