Chimamanda Adichie Accuses Euracare Hospital of Negligence Over Death of Son

In a deeply personal statement that has since circulated publicly, the award-winning Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, accuses a Lagos hospital of grave medical negligence following the death of her 21-month-old son, Nkanu.

What began as a Christmas visit to Lagos and what appeared to be a manageable illness, she says, ended in an avoidable tragedy inside a hospital theatre. 

According to Adichie, her son fell ill while the family was in Lagos for the Christmas holidays. Initially, the symptoms appeared to be an ordinary cold. But his condition worsened and developed into what she described as a serious infection. He was admitted to Atlantis Hospital, where doctors assessed him as unwell but stable.

Plans were already in place to fly Nkanu to the United States the next day, January 7. Travelling doctors were scheduled to accompany him, and a medical team at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore was prepared to receive him on arrival. 

Before the flight, the Johns Hopkins team requested two procedures: a lumbar puncture and an MRI. The Nigerian medical team also decided to insert a central line to facilitate the administration of intravenous medications during travel. Atlantis Hospital referred the family to Euracare Hospital, describing it as the best-equipped facility in Lagos to carry out those procedures.

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On the morning of January 6, Adichie says her son was taken from Atlantis to Euracare, carried in his father’s arms. Because he was a sick toddler, he would be sedated to prevent movement during the MRI and the central line insertion.

Adichie waited outside the theatre. Then she noticed something that made her stomach drop. Medical staff, including a doctor she identified as Dr M, began rushing into the theatre. She says she immediately knew something had gone wrong.

She was later told that the anaesthesiologist had administered too much propofol, a powerful sedative. According to her, her son became unresponsive and had to be resuscitated. What followed was a rapid and frightening escalation: he was placed on a ventilator, intubated, and transferred to the ICU.

Then came seizures. Then cardiac arrest. These, Adichie emphasised, were complications her son had never experienced before that day. A few hours later, he was dead.

One of the most serious allegations in Adichie’s statement is that her son was not properly monitored after sedation. She claims that after being given an excessive dose of propofol, no one was actively monitoring him, and that the anaesthesiologist casually carried him on his shoulder into the theatre.

Because of this, she says, no one can say with certainty when exactly her son became unresponsive.

“How can you sedate a sick child and neglect to monitor him?” she asked in the statement.

She further alleged that after the central line procedure, the same anaesthesiologist switched off her son’s oxygen before carrying him, again on his shoulder, to the ICU. In her view, these actions represented a complete disregard for standard medical protocols, especially when dealing with a critically ill child.

Adichie described the anaesthesiologist’s conduct as “criminal negligence,” accusing him of being fatally casual with her son’s life.

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Beyond her own loss, Adichie raised broader concerns about hospital oversight. She claimed that the same anaesthesiologist had previously overdosed other children in at least two separate cases.

Her question was pointed and unsettling: if this was known, why was he still allowed to work at Euracare Hospital?

“This must never happen to another child,” she wrote.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s account of her son’s death is devastating not because it is dramatic, but because it is precise. Every detail points back to one central claim: that her child would still be alive if basic medical care and monitoring standards had been followed.

For now, a family mourns a 21-month-old boy whose life ended far too soon. And a country is left with questions that cannot be ignored.

“It is like living your worst nightmare,” she wrote. “I will never survive the loss of my child.”