A senior consultant physician, identified simply as Dr. Ibrahim, has died after collapsing minutes after arriving at a private hospital in Kano State to attend to elderly patients who had waited for hours for medical consultation.
PLATFORM TIMES gathered that the incident occurred on Saturday at Arewa Surgery Hospital in the Hotoro area of Kano, where the doctor had reportedly answered an urgent call to replace another consultant who was unable to keep scheduled appointments.
The incident was recounted by Suleiman Harbo, an aide to the Governor of Jigawa State, who said he witnessed the tragedy while accompanying his elderly mother to the hospital.
According to Harbo, he arrived at the facility around 5 p.m. for his mother’s appointment but was informed that the consultant initially scheduled to see patients would no longer be available.
He said hospital officials subsequently contacted Dr. Ibrahim, informing him that several elderly patients, most of them above 80 years old, were waiting for medical attention.
Harbo said the physician promised to come after observing the Maghrib prayer.
He explained that shortly after arriving at the hospital, Dr. Ibrahim suddenly became dizzy as he stepped out of his vehicle and collapsed.
The consultant was immediately rushed to the hospital’s emergency unit, where fellow doctors made frantic efforts to revive him.
“Within about 15 minutes, he was confirmed dead,” Harbo said.
Describing the incident as heartbreaking, Harbo said the doctor’s sudden death threw patients and medical personnel into mourning.
“The painful irony was that all the patients waiting to see him were above 80 years old, while about five senior consultant doctors fought desperately to save him, yet all of them broke down in tears,” he said.
Harbo recalled that his mother, who was unaware of the incident, had asked if the doctor had arrived before another patient informed her that the physician they had been waiting for had died.
He said his mother responded by praying for the deceased, saying, “May Allah have mercy on him. Let us just go home. I am already healed.”
Harbo further disclosed that witnesses said the late physician’s last audible words were, “La ilaha illallah,” the Islamic declaration of faith.
He described Dr. Ibrahim as a committed medical practitioner whose sense of duty led him to honour the emergency request despite not being originally scheduled to work that day.
The cause of the doctor’s sudden collapse had yet to be ascertained as of the time of filing this report.
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