Nigerian hospital raises alarm over increasing rate of accidents

LAGOS, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- The morgue at southwest Nigeria's Ondo State Specialist Hospital is over-congested with heaps of unclaimed corpses, a doctor said Monday.

This development has become the greatest challenge facing the hospital in Ore town of the state, Akindele Semudara, the Hospital Chief Medical Director, told reporters.

This is as a result of increasing rate of accidents along the Benin-Ore-Lagos highway, he added.

Decongesting the morgue had posed a serious challenge to the hospital management, he said.

According to him, speeding and reckless driving is the order of the day on the expressway.

"We record a high number of accident victims during this "Ember months" as officials of the Ondo State Rescue Operations bring corpses of unclaimed accident victims to the hospital daily," he added.

Road accidents take place frequently in Nigeria due to reckless driving, bad road conditions and overloading. More than 1,000 people are killed on the road each year in the country.

According to road transport data, 11,363 road crashes occurred in 2016, with 28.85 percent of the crashes occurring in the last quarter of the year. December had the highest record of road crashes. Data from previous years -- 2014 and 2015 -- also show an increase in road traffic accidents during the end of the year. Enditem