30th March, 2022
By Lucy Ogalue
One of the hospitalised victims of the Abuja-Kaduna train attack has bullet lodged in her heart, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi disclosed on Wednesday.
“They are bringing an expert tomorrow for that one, a cardiologist, to see if there will be surgery or not to take out the bullet”, he said.
Amaechi spoke in Kaduna after visiting the victims at the 44 Nigerian Army Reference Hospital in Kaduna.
He called on well-meaning Nigerians to support the Army in caring for the victims.
”The CMD and I have been talking, the army has not charged one kobo on any patient, and they have given the maximum medical treatment that they can give to any patients.
”You saw the patients with burns and then the one that has bullet located in her heart.
”The rest, they discharged, they said they have only seven left and the rest have been discharged.
”The ministry and I think the Federal government are grateful to the
Nigerian army for providing such services.
”But one thing again I have said to the Nigerian people is to liaise with the hospital management and see how much money they can contribute for the treatment of the patients.
”Obviously those drugs are not manufactured here, the experts they are bringing from outside, don’t work with the army, so they definitely have to pay them.
”We will try as much as possible to see what contributions we can make to the management of the hospital to assist in taking care of the patients,” Amaechi said.
The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Col. Steven Onuchukwu, said most of the victims received were all currently stable.
According to Onuchukwu, the discharged patients will be followed up by the management to ensure their psychological state is restored.
On how they were able to manage the situation, the doctor said they had contingency plan for such situations which was brought up and they also used available resources at their disposal to manage the situation.
”None of the cases is beyond us. Because we also have collaborations with our sister agencies, the teaching hospitals.
” So for the expertise we do not have we also borrowed such expertise to manage the patient, so currently we do not have any of such challenges,” Onuchukwu added.
A train from Abuja-Kaduna was attacked by terrorists on March 28.
So far eight passengers out of 398 that purchased the ticket have been confirmed dead.
Many others are still missing.