Lagos train accident: Assessment of victims followed best practice – CMD
The Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) says the triage of the train and bus accident victims in an open space followed international best practice in an emergency situation.
Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, the Chief Medical Director, LASUTH, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
Triage is the preliminary assessment of patients or casualties in order to determine the urgency of their needs for treatment and the nature of treatment required.
VMT NEWS reports that some people had criticised LASUTH for conducting triage of the victims in an open space after a video emerged on social media.
Fabamwo said that triage in an open space for mass casualty was an international best practice to enable health workers to assess the severity of a patient’s injury.
”We got 85 patients at once. There’s no hospital in the world that can have 85 emergency beds waiting for victims.
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”It is international best practice that when you have mass casualty like that, you triage them in an open space where all health workers can move around and have space to assess the severity of their injuries.
”They will then categorise them to severe, moderate and mild; and from there, they would go to theatre, intensive care unit (ICU), ward for further treatment.
”As we speak now, the triage area is empty. All the patients have been moved to various places,” he said.
Fabamwo attributed the criticism and misinformation circulating on social media about triage of the accident victims to ignorance of many people about triage practice in an emergency situation.
He said that LASUTH was committed to providing quality care that would aid the quick recovery of the survivors.
VMT NEWS reports that a Lagos State Government staff bus, conveying civil servants and their dependents from Isolo to Alausa, was involved in an accident with a train at PWD Bus-Stop along Agege Motor Road.
Victims of the accident, which occurred at about 7.30 a.m. on Thursday, were taken to LASUTH for treatment.
Earlier, Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who visited LASUTH to see the injured staff expressed his sadness over the unfortunate incident and sympathised with the victims.
Sanwo-Olu said that prompt attention and intervention of LASUTH staff, who were joined by the students and staff of the College of Medicine of Lagos State University, revived 79 out of 85 passengers.
”The team at LASUTH expertly setup an outdoor triage centre which has contributed in saving lives, speeding up injury level profiling and supporting immediate critical action.
”There were 85 passengers on board the bus with six deaths, 42 moderate injuries, 29 serious and eight mild injuries, according to the LASUTH classification scale,” he said.
The governor said two deaths were recorded at the scene of the accident, while four people died at the ICU and during surgical operations.
Sanwo-Olu said the staff are currently receiving treatment at LASUTH and other government-owned hospitals in the state.
