The police in Kwara state have arrested a nurse attendant in a private hospital in the Ilorin metropolis, Kwara state for selling the placenta of a baby born in the hospital where she works in Oko-Erin area in the state, to a Muslim cleric for N20, 000.
Trouble started when the father of the baby, Jimoh Abdulfatah, demanded for the placenta of his child after birth. He had brought his wife to the private hospital for a caesarian operation after unsuccessful efforts by his wife to have a normal delivery at both the Civil Service Clinic and the General Hospital, Ilorin where they had gone for medical attention.
After the successful operation at the private hospital, the father, who said that he had passed through stress for two days over his wife’s situation, added that he had forgotten to ask for the placenta on the day his wife was delivered the baby and had to come back when he remembered to demand for the placenta from the hospital.
However, Abdulfatah said that a senior nurse he met in the hospital had told him that the nurse attendant that was also on duty on the day of the operation to bring the placenta said she could no longer see the placenta where she had put it on the day of the delivery. This raised eyebrows and immediately, yhe medical director of the hospital,alerted the police and the nurse attendant was subsequently arrested.
After intense interrogation, the nurse confessed that she gave the placenta to one Muslim cleric in the town. The police immediately moved in and arrested the Muslim cleric.
The cleric confirmed receiving the placenta from the nurse attendant but failed to produce it, saying that he had thrown it into a stream near his house. The Muslim cleric, whose wife is also pregnant, was said to have told the police that the placenta was useless for the purpose he wanted to use it for, adding that the baby was delivered through operation against a normal delivery that could have made the placenta useful.
