Local TV channel, HiTV Cameroon reports that the nurses in question exhibited “negligence and incompetence” in handling the expectant mother when she went calling at the hospital.

As the story goes, Damaris went to the hospital on Sunday, June 2, 2019 to find out what could be the cause of the pain in her tommy.

Dayang Bouba, husband to the deceased woman says she went to the hospital that fateful Sunday to consult a doctor.

“My wife cooked the food I took to my workplace Sunday morning. While at work, she called to say she will be going to the hospital because she is feeling some pains in her stomach. She told me she was to consult the doctor whether she was due delivery. She later called to say she had arrived the hospital. I asked if she was being attended to by a doctor and she said the doctor was attending to another woman who was being delivered of a baby. She said they will see her when they are done,” Bouba narrates.

The husband of the deceased adds that: “After about thirty minutes, I called her several times and she would not take the phone. It was then that I came to the hospital. I saw doctors going in and out. I tried to enter and they refused. I sat outside and they came out and gave me a book with prescriptions of the drugs I had to buy. After that, I heard my wife crying. She cried at some point and I could no longer hear her voice. It was then that I was told my wife had died.”

HiTV quotes family members as saying that the nurses at the maternity ward demonstrated signs of “total neglect that led to the untimely death” of Damaris.

A lady believed to be a family member recounts how the deceased had blood oozing out of her hand as a result of a drip she had been administered. While the late Damaris wanted the drip removed because of the pains she was feeling, the nurses insisted that it was the drip that will make her put to birth fast, a family member said. The nurses are said to have removed the drip only when the deceased had tried to do so on her own.

A member of the regional committee to fight against maternal mortality said they had to see the director of the hospital Professor George Enow Orock because they were not convinced with the accounts of the medical personnel who attended to the death woman.

“The hospital should not be a dying place.  They should take good care of everyone who is rushed here,” they said.

Bouba, whose wife died while expecting their baby, says he only wants to know why and how his wife died so that such does not happen to other women.

The director of the hospital is reported to have convened a crisis meeting during which the nurses in question were suspended. It is not known if investigations would be opened to shed light on the unfortunate situation.