By Ijeoma Nwankpa, Abuja, Nigeria.
The Nigerian government has commended the CMD and staff of 44 Nigerian Army Reference hospital in Kaduna for their prompt treatment and attention to the victims of Abuja- Kaduna train attack.
The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, gave the commendation when he visited the victims at the hospital.
He said the Federal government was grateful to the military for the assistance.
”We are greatful to the Army. The CMD and I have been talking. The Army hasn’t charged a dime on any patient. Not one naira. And they have given the maximum medical care you can give to any patient. They treated the patients with bomb wounds and the lady with gun wounds in her heart, they are bringing in specialist, a cardiologist, to attend to her.
They have just seven patients left, the rest have been discharged.
According to the Minister, they will liaise with the hospital to see how much money to contribute to the victim’s medical bills, since the drugs they are using are not being manufactured here in Nigeria and the experts they are bringing from outside do not work for the Nigerian Army, they will have to be paid.
” I will speak with the President, he is already giving directives. I’m sure by the time we finish the repair of the rail tracks, we would have gotten approval for the security equipment and would possibly have been installed. But even if it’s not installed yet, we have spoken with the management of the Nigerian Airforce to escort the trains. They were previously escorting the trains but recently, the weather has been very bad and visibility dropped to below 500 meters so they couldn’t fly.
So they’ve not been flying this is why the attack was successful, but they have resumed flying and will escort the train when we resume.”
Amaechi said the President has approved that people should be employed to be working on the rail tracks for the next six to seven months until the equipment is installed, and they intend to employ villagers on the corridor. So they can report any suspicious movements to the authorities.
The Minister promised the people that rail services would soon be back with the immediate commencement of work on the less than 2 kilometers rail tracks damaged. While the military has promised to provide security as they work.
According to the Chief Medical Director of 44 Nigerian Army Refrence Hospital, Kaduna, Colonel Stephen Onochukwu, all the victims that were brought to them from the train incident are all stable.
”We had 25 of them that were admitted. We discharged some of them that are stable but we are still following them up. Currently we have seven of them still left in the hospital. We deployed our contingency resources to manage the situation and there are no challenges.”
There is none of the cases that is beyond us because we also have collaboration with the teaching hospitals, so far, the expertise we do not have, we borrow the expertise to manage the patients.
However, the Kaduna state Governor, Nasir El-Rufai has called for the establishment of military bases between Katari and Rijana areas to forestall future occurrence.
