The National Medical Services Laboratories (NMS) in Pennsylvania, United States, has denied the claim by the Lagos state government that a toxicology test to ascertain the cause of the death of singer Ilerioluwa Aloba, aka Mohbad, was conducted in their facility.
The claim by the NMS Labs was in response to inquiries made by our correspondent, who embarked on a fact-finding mission to ascertain the musician’s cause of death.
Before embarking on the fact-finding mission, some concerned members of the public reportedly protested against the claim made by a pathologist, who appeared before the Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, May 15, and said an autopsy could not ascertain Mohbad’s cause of death because his corpse had decomposed.
Reacting to the development, the counsel for the state government, O. Akinde, told the Coroner’s Court sitting in the Ikorodu area of the state sometime in November 2023 that a toxicology test, which is an aspect of an autopsy seeking to determine the cause of Mohbad’s death will be conducted in the United States.
“If there is an emergency like this one that we have, they will not say they cannot handle it. So, there are three of them in the US and the one handling this particular one is the NMS in Pennsylvania, USA,” Gbenga Omotoso, Commissioner for Information and Strategy said during a live programme.
Meanwhile, the single e-mail address that these labs had been using for correspondence was also discovered on the NMS Labs’ website.
Newsmen were sent on an inquiry to confirm if a toxicology test to ascertain Mohbad’s death was conducted at their facility.
However, in response to the above question, the Client Services Associate, Forensics Division, NMS Labs, Esther Dede, refuted the claim by the state government that Mohbad’s toxicology test was conducted at any of their laboratories.
In her words, “Unfortunately, we do not have a case for that patient. To maintain our compliance with HIPAA privacy regulations, we would need authorisation from the submitting agency.”
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