COVID-19: Doctors who reject patients risk license withdrawal

Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, has threatened to withdraw the licenses of medical doctors who deliberately reject and turn back COVID-19 patients from their hospital without attending to them, stating that it is unethical and unacceptable.

Ehanire who revealed this in Abuja while answering questions at the 42nd joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, said it is unethical to reject patients who come to the hospital for treatment.

“I have said here repeatedly that every person who comes to the hospital must be seen and attended to and at least, be given advice on what to do. If you can’t do it, advise him on where to go or call transport for him. But to just say go, we don’t handle that is not ethical, and it is not acceptable.

“So, if that happens anywhere, you have the authority to write to the board of that hospital and lay complain.

“Or you can also write to the ministry of health, or you can write to the state ministry of health if it is a state-owned hospital. If it is a private hospital, you can write to the medical director or if they have a management board, you can write there to express yourself.

“This is very important. So, we do receive cases or complaints like that and we have always followed them up and in cases where it is proven that there is an infringement on the duties of the doctor it is referred to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria and it is well known that they have gone to as far as withdrawing licenses of doctors for cases of very serious medical misbehavior,” Ehanire said.

The Minister also disclosed that the federal government of Nigeria is yet to receive a report from research centres about the efficacy of the recently imported Madagascar herbal cure.

According to him, the herbal cure has been given to research centres in the country, and they are working on them.

He said, “We do not have any information yet. We have given them to our research centres and they are working on them. None of them has reported back yet.

“The time it will take for all these researches is not what we know, but I think after a period, I will reach out to them to find out if they can give me an interim report,” Ehanire added.