News Room — Ajifa Solomon
Athena Aramiz was just one year old when a mild fever set off a series of events that ended in tragedy. What should have been a routine visit to Fertile Ground Hospital in Jos, Plateau State capital city—where she was born and her parents were registered patients—left her grieving family questioning the quality of care at the facility.
The evening of Nov. 12, 2023, ended like any other for the lively toddler, whose laughter filled the Aramiz household with joy. But by morning, her parents noticed she had developed a fever. Concerned, they rushed her to Fertile Ground Hospital.
Upon arrival, Athena’s father, Aramiz Adigizey, arranged for a private room. But the family’s ordeal began almost immediately.
“We were given a room, but no one came to attend to her,” he said. “It took multiple calls before a nurse finally arrived, about 30 minutes later.”
The nurse administered several injections before locating a vein to draw blood and placed Athena on a drip. By the morning of Nov. 14, Athena seemed to improve.
“She was sitting up, playing. She looked fine,” Aramiz recalled.
However, the brief respite ended that afternoon. A nurse and a doctor administered another injection, after which Athena’s condition deteriorated rapidly.
“That injection changed everything,” Aramiz said. “She became unusually sleepy and passed out, though we didn’t realise it at first. From there, it became prayer after prayer, hope after hope.” Aramiz said calls for further medical attention were met with delays.
“The nurses were so lackadaisical. They took another 30 minutes to respond. I kept trying to remind myself it’s a hospital—there might be other emergencies—but the waiting was maddening.” It wasn’t until much later that he learned the injection given to his daughter was diazepam, a sedative often used to treat anxiety, muscle spasms, and seizures.
“Drug addicts use it to get high,” Aramiz said. His fears were heightened when he overheard a nurse whisper in Hausa, “It seems they gave her [referring to Athena] too much diazepam.”
Diazepam, a medication from the benzodiazepine class, is commonly used to treat conditions such as anxiety, seizures, and muscle spasms. Known for its sedative effects, it is sometimes employed in emergencies to manage convulsions. However, improper dosages can lead to serious side effects, including excessive drowsiness and respiratory issues, according to experts.
Athena’s situation worsened. On 15 November, she began gasping for air and needed oxygen. But when the staff brought an oxygen tank, it was empty.
“Soon after placing her on oxygen, a number of people rushed in, and they were a bit panicky that the oxygen machine had no oxygen in it,” Aramiz recalled. “They had to call for another machine to be brought in. What was she inhaling for about an hour?” Aramiz exclaimed.
Athena endured further trauma as medical staff used tubes to suction a black substance from her airway. “They had to bring in pipes and put them through her mouth, down her throat, into her system. They were sucking out whatever it was that was black as night. Something that wasn’t there initially had entered her system,” the father recalled.
JoeyOffAir learnt that no “trained paediatrician” attended to Athena until Nov. 16, shortly before she died. “A paediatrician finally came just before I left to get food. I had been at the hospital for two days without eating. While I was out, I got the call that rocked my world—Athena was gone,” he said.
When he returned, the family received no commiseration from staff. Instead, an in-house doctor coldly told him to ask his wife to stop crying. “I was so shocked, I couldn’t say anything.”
Later, a hospital staff member approached their car with a bill. “A pawn being sent to bring a bill, I mean, there was no decency to even send a doctor or nurse. I said a pawn because he was used as one in this equation and context,” Aramiz told JoeyOffAir.
A year has passed since Athena’s tragic death at Fertile Ground Hospital under contentious circumstances. As her family continues to grieve, their sorrow is compounded by disappointment in the hospital’s management, which has yet to show empathy despite allegations of negligence.
The Hospital Denies Allegations
Fertile Ground Hospital has refuted allegations of negligence surrounding Athena’s death. The attending paediatrician, who declined to disclose his name, denied claims of delayed care or incorrect dosage. “She was well attended to when she arrived,” he told JoeyOffAir. “I was not around when she was brought in at first. But we have an in-house doctor who manages patients before the arrival of a specialist. And, usually, when there’s a situation they cannot manage, they call for input from a specialist.”
The paediatrician’s recollection of the events was hazy, given that a year had passed. However, he claimed Athena had suffered a prolonged seizure her parents hadn’t noticed. “The only complaint they brought in was that she had been sleeping for too long and had not woken up for a while. When we checked, we discovered she had a seizure.”
To halt the seizure, he administered diazepam, a treatment he described as standard practice: “The correct practice when a child or an adult is convulsing is to administer diazepam. Even if it’s a newborn baby that has a seizure, you must administer diazepam. Seizures are abnormal electrical discharges from the brain. So you don’t want that to linger in a child because of complications that can arise from it.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, a global healthcare organisation, diazepam injection is commonly used to manage seizures, including status epilepticus, in addition to relieving symptoms of anxiety and alcohol withdrawal. However, the organisation emphasises that “the risks of taking the medicine must be weighed against the good it will do. This is a decision [the patient or their family] and [the] doctor will make.”
The Mayo Clinic further warns that “the presence of other medical problems may affect the use of this medicine,” underscoring the importance of considering a patient’s full medical history. However, JoeyOffAir could not confirm whether this evaluation was conducted in Athena’s case.
The paediatrician recalled treating Athena the day before her death and returning the next day to assist with resuscitation. “Dr Chris (the hospital’s managing doctor) had started the resuscitation before I came, and when I came, I administered the diazepam.”
“I saw her twice. When she was brought in at first, I was called upon to assess her and later came in once again at night to resuscitate her,” the paediatrician said.
He also refuted allegations that Athena was placed on an empty oxygen tank. “I’m not an in-house paediatrician, but when I came (the second time), the oxygen was on, a big tank of oxygen, and if it finishes, they replace it with another tank of oxygen. The hospital is usually stocked with sufficient oxygen.”
He claimed that no single hospital in Jos had an in-house paediatrician. However, his claim that no hospital in Jos employs in-house paediatricians was contradicted by JoeyOffAir’s findings, which confirmed the presence of resident specialists at several facilities, including Jos University Teaching Hospital and Bingham University Teaching Hospital.
Dr Chris, the hospital’s managing director, acknowledged the family’s grief but admitted he had not contacted them since Athena’s death. “This was an unfortunate event. We feel their pain. We are known for rendering excellent services, but we cannot give life. I will reach out to them.”
He further requested JoeyOffAir to convey the hospital’s condolences to the family, stating, “We will try to reach out to them. We are also deeply pained, as always, whenever we lose a patient.”
Unanswered Questions
The absence of an autopsy has left critical questions about Athena’s death unresolved. When JoeyOffAir consulted a lawyer on the matter, she said: “The lack of an autopsy weakens the family’s case. It could imply a concession on their side. In such cases, hospitals can deny responsibility, citing other potential factors.”
For Athena’s father, Aramiz, the decision to forgo an autopsy was driven by a desire for healing rather than litigation. “For me, any form of verdict in the court ordering the hospital to pay some sort of compensation would have been blood money,” he said. “Our daughter would have had to undergo an autopsy, and I couldn’t bear to put my wife through that. We wanted to avoid having gory images of Athena in our head for the rest of our lives.”
A Year Without Athena
As the Adigizey family marks one year since Athena’s passing, the pain remains raw. Aramiz has faced criticism from those who blamed him for taking his daughter to Fertile Ground Hospital. “People called me a careless father,” he shared.
Reflecting on Athena’s vibrant life, Aramiz described her as “a bundle of joy, love, and curiosity” whose laughter and songs filled their home. “I want her to be remembered for her laughter,” he said wistfully.
Athena’s death highlights a broader systemic flaw in Nigerian healthcare, where delayed responses and indifference from medical personnel are all too common. A few years ago, Kingsley Kalu suffered permanent damage to his left leg due to alleged negligence at the National Hospital in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The World Health Organization reports that “around 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care and more than 3 million deaths occur annually due to unsafe care. In low-to-middle income countries, as many as 4 in 100 people die from unsafe care.”
“We must learn that empathy is not optional; it is essential,” Aramiz said. “Doctors must uphold their oath and remain vigilant in their duties.”
Despite their grief, the family has found solace in the arrival of another child, Bethel, who bears a striking resemblance to Athena. “I’m not trying to say it’s a reincarnation but I’m just grateful to God.”
