How Nurses In LASUTH Sells Patients Drugs At A Cheaper Rate

A report by Leadership has revealed how medicines purchased by patients at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) are being stolen and resold by medical personnel.

According to the report, nurses are the perpetrators of the crime as some of them have turned to medicine vendors, selling the stolen medicines at a cheaper rate to other patients.

This is easy because the patients’ names are not written on the medicines.

The medications are usually exposed in a transparent rubber but there are no names written on it to indicate that a particular medicine belongs to patient A or B.

It was gathered that the normal practice is that patients’ medicines are kept in a locker close to their beds, but in this circumstance, these expensive medicines are kept in transparent rubber and placed on a roller at the leg end of the patients bed.

This makes it easy for the nurses to pilfer and then resell to the patients at a cheaper price when compared to the amount they go for at the dispensary of the hospital.

Some of the relatives of patients at the hospital confirmed that this act of stealing of medicines by nurses had been going on for a long time.

One of the relatives, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said when her mother was admitted for diabetes at the hospital and the doctor prescribed three-day medicine for her, which she bought.

She said when she went the next day to visit her mother, the nurse attending to her for that day told her that she had to buy more medicines as the ones she bought was exhausted.

“I became agitated because the prescription was for three days and I ensured I procured the medicines.

“I later got to know how these nurses steal the medicines because one faithful day, after new prescription was given to me, I went to the hospital dispensary to buy the medicines. While waiting on the queue, a nurse approached me and asked me to give her the prescription list given to me by the doctor.

“She then pulled me aside and told me she had the medications, and that she was ready to sell to me at a cheaper rate and also save me the time of standing at the long queue.

“So I told the nurse to bring the medications. To my greatest surprise, the medicines were the same sold at the store; the same brand, and this nurse was willing to sell them to me at a cheaper rate.

“So I asked some of the relatives of patients at the hospital if they were experiencing the same thing, and they all attested to the fact that nurses had been selling these medicines to them for a long time at a cheaper rate and saving them the time of queuing.

“I knew for a fact that my mum’s medications didn’t just disappear; they were stolen by the nurses and then resold to other people at a cheaper rate. This is indeed not fair,” she said.

Other relatives of sick patients also confirmed that this fraudulent practice had been going on for a long time and called on the management to check it.

When approached, some of the nurses denied the allegation, claiming that before they even open the see-through can to administer medicines to the patients, they ensured that the patients were aware.

As to why patients medicines are missing, the nurses claimed that it cannot be them committing such an act.

Reacting to the issue, the chief medical director, LASUTH, Professor Adewale Oke said: “Anywhere you work, you will have good and bad people, but we must be given the opportunity to fish out the bad ones.

“As far as I am concerned, this opportunity hasn’t been given to us. But now that you have raised it, we will investigate it.”