A biomedical engineer posted one story yesterday.
It broke the internet — and our hearts.
A tiny premature baby, Farouq, lay in a Nigerian teaching hospital NICU.
He needed a ventilator to breathe.
One night the power went out.
The backup inverter failed.
The batteries were dead.
Three memos asking for new ones had been ignored.
For 17 long minutes the ward was pitch black.
Doctors pumped air by hand.
The father fell to his knees, begging NEPA to bring the light back.
The light returned — two minutes too late.
The ventilator started again… on a lifeless body.
The engineer wrote one line that says everything:
“In this country, your skill means nothing if the system wants to kill you.”
This is not one bad night.
This is Africa’s everyday reality.
The Same Tragedy, Different Countries
- Uganda: triplets died when the only oxygen machine lost power.
- Kenya: surgeons finished a C-section by phone torch.
- Sierra Leone: vaccines worth a month spoiled overnight.
- Ghana: a major hospital theatre ran on a small generator for 11 months.
Same story. Different names. Same ending.
Why Does This Keep Happening?
- Power is seen as a bonus, not a life-support system.
- A ₦200,000 battery sits unsigned for months because “no budget”.
- We open new wards for photos, but forget what happens at 2 a.m.
- A baby has to die and go viral before anyone acts.
Fixes Exist — and They Work
- Solar + battery systems now cost less than diesel over five years.
- Simple yearly service contracts keep 95 % of machines running.
- Ring-fenced power budgets that cannot be touched.
- Rwanda and parts of Kenya already prove it is possible.
Until We Act, Babies Keep Paying
Every time we shrug and say “NEPA took light”, another Farouq loses the fight.
We can keep crying on social media.
Or we can demand one simple rule:
Electricity in a hospital must be treated like blood in a blood bank — always there, no excuses.
Rest in peace, Baby Farouq.
Your 17 minutes in darkness should be the last.
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Fellow Nurses Africa is the independent voice of African nursing. We educate, inform and support nurses across Africa.
