Death at childbirth: Family opts out of autopsy

After weeks of accusations and counter accusation over the death of 36-year old Mrs. Dolapo Adesanya at the EKO Hospital, Ikeja, the controversy surrounding the death of the 36-year old banker may have finally ended as the extended family of the deceased have resolved to bear their loss and let their wife and daughter “rest in peace”.

Speaking to our correspondent the family Lawyer, Oluwashina Ogungbade of Afe Babalola Chambers disclosed that “the members of the two families held a joint meeting with representations from both sides in which a decision was reached and agreed that there would be no further need to go ahead with litigation and as such, there would be no need for exhumation of the corpse or any autopsy.”

Ogungbade said: “Both sides have agreed to allow the issue die and are no longer interested in unravelling the cause of Dolapo's death; we want to move on and allow our beloved Dolapo rest in peace”.

It will be recalled that after news about Dolapo's death had been broken via the social media on April 9 by one of the couple's friends, Olanbanji Olusanya who recounted the ordeal Dolapo went through between March 31 and April 5 when she passed away, the management of EKO hospital and the family of the deceased had disputed the cause of death.

The management of the hospital had said Dolapo's death was most likely as a result of “clinical diagnosis of pulmonary embolism”, noting that “On the faithful day she suddenly developed a cough, became breathless and collapsed and all efforts to resuscitate her proved unsuccessful.

“A clinical diagnosis of pulmonary embolism was made. Pulmonary embolism sometimes occurs in people with predisposing factors e.g. post-surgery and post deliveries etc without warning”.

The hospital had equally noted in the response to the public interest in the matter that “Further insight/confirmation into the cause of death and other predisposing factors would have been revealed by post mortem examination which the family refused, and we had to respect”.

However, Dolapo's husband protested the position of EKO hospital arguing that the hospital was culpable in the death of his wife through complicity arising from “negligence and improper medical attention”.

He had accused the hospital of abandoning Dolapo at a critical time she needed their medical expertise “because there was no doctor to attend to her and even after several tests were ordered, to aid medical treatment, the staff who were to carry out the laboratory investigations and write out the reports were not at work, claiming that it was Easter break”.

The family had earlier planned to exhume the corpse which had since been buried in her husband's home town Irewon, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State for autopsy to ascertain the cause of the death.