Why we lost 18 patients - UCH CMD

The Chief Medical Director, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Jesse Otegbayo, said the hospital has lost 18 persons out of the 159 COVID-19 patients it has treated so far.

Otegbayo spoke on Friday, August 14, 2020 in Ibadan on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Josephus Foundation-aided new Infectious Disease Centre at UCH.

According to him, the coronavirus cases treated by the teaching hospital were severe with some of the patients having underlying health conditions.

“From the last figure I saw, we have treated about 159 COVID-19 patients and 18 of them died,” he said.

“We have those mortalities because we take the sickest of the sick; the most severe cases are brought to the University College Hospital and that is the only place where they can be treated.

“We have some of them with comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes and asthma and some other chronic lung diseases.

“Some of them have kidney failure that requires dialysis which is not available in many other places in Oyo State; that is why we recorded these mortalities at the UCH,” he said.