OUTRAGE has greeted the death of a pregnant woman at the Bwari General Hospital in Abuja after the facility allegedly failed to provide the oxygen she needed.

This is even as the facility’s management has denied claims by a relative of the deceased that the absence of oxygen caused her death.

The case became public after the  deceased’s sister, Deka George, a social media influencer, shared the story while mourning her passing.

George said her sister, Evans Akinloye Chiamaka, was expecting a baby and developed health challenges that required her to be rushed to hospital.

She alleged that the medical facility could not provide oxygen when it was urgently needed. She wrote in her post, “Nigeria failed you. A whole general hospital didn’t have oxygen.”

However, the hospital’s Medical Director, Ibrahim Mijinyawa, a doctor, debunked the claim. He said the hospital had enough oxygen that it often shared with other facilities.

Mijinyawa challenged anyone who doubted him to come to the facility and check its oxygen plant. According to him, Global Fund recently donated an oxygen plant to the hospital, which he said the facility could not exhaust.

Although he could not discuss the real cause of death over the phone, the medical director said doctors, including consultants, and nurses did their best to save the woman’s life, but they could not.

“We have a brand-new oxygen plant donated by the Global Fund that is functional. We give oxygen to other hospitals. The issue that the woman did not receive oxygen, I don’t know how her sister got that kind of information.

“Unfortunately, the woman is no more. She had surgery. All that was needed to be done, we as human beings, our doctors on call, including our consultants and nurses did everything they needed to do. But the patient died. To say that we didn’t give oxygen, oxygen is the least of our problem,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the deceased’s sister expressed regret over missing calls from her sister shortly before her death. According to her, “I missed your calls because I was in court.”

Outrage

The incident has triggered widespread reactions online, with many Nigerians raising concerns about the condition of healthcare facilities and the availability of critical medical equipment in hospitals across the country.

Medical oxygen is very important in emergency treatment, especially for patients who have trouble breathing or are in critical condition. Health experts say when oxygen is not available at the right time, it can make a patient’s condition worse and could lead to death.

In many developing countries, including Nigeria, some cases that result in patients’ death are linked to weak health systems, poor funding, and shortages of essential medical supplies. According to the World Health Organization, basic resources such as oxygen, medicines, trained staff, and functional equipment are critical for saving lives in hospitals.

While the management of the Bwari General Hospital absolved the facility of negligence or alleged failure to provide oxygen the deceased needed to survive, cases of medical negligence abound in Nigeria.

Consequently, Nigerians are quick to blame hospitals when patients fail to make it out of the facilities.

Examples of medical negligence that were reported in Nigeria recently include the case in which Kano State Hospitals Management Board confirmed that surgical scissors were mistakenly left inside a patient’s body during surgery. It admitted negligence in the case.

The ICIR reported another case of medical negligencewhen author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie accused a Lagos hospital of negligence after the death of one of her 21-month-old twin boys, Nkanu Nnamdi, who died on 6 January 2026 after a brief illness.