Apprehension has gripped residents of Yanshanu community in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State as seven more persons who, over the years, underwent surgical operations at Murna Hospital have equally claimed that their kidneys have been harvested by the embattled operator of the clinic, Mr Noah Kekere.
Until the news of an alleged kidney harvest broke out, Noah Kekere, was one obscure ‘doctor’ plying his trade in Jos, the Plateau state capital. However, Kekere is now in the news for an entirely wrong reason.
Operating a clinic that had the name Murna Clinic and Maternity in Jos metropolis, he reportedly harvested the kidney of one Mrs Kehinde Kamal, in 2018, when she visited his hospital for an operation that had nothing to do with kidney.
The Chairman, Yanshanu Community Development Association, Alhaji Jamilu Baba, at the weekend said that all those who had one form of surgical operation or the other at the clinic in the past had been asked to go for tests to confirm the state of their kidneys.
Alhaji Baba said that so far, no fewer than seven people, males and females, have been discovered to have one kidney each with the other missing. He added that other people were still in the process of going for scans based on the report before the community.
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“It may interest you that those who went for scans are complaining of the same thing. At the moment, about seven have claimed that only one kidney was found in their bodies after scans. All of them had, at different times, had surgical operations performed on them by the so-called doctor at Murna Clinic,” he said.
The community leader added: “The hospital is called Murna Clinic owned by one man called Dr Noah Kekere, popularly known as Dr Yellow. He has been in this community for over 18 years. The people of this community trusted him and patronised him whenever they were not feeling well.
“But to our great surprise, we learned of his involvement in this unfortunate incident that he operated on a woman about seven years ago when she had appendicitis. Unfortunately, after the operation, the woman was still complaining of stomach pain. Kekere has been managing her and collecting money from the family.
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“After much complaining without any improvement, the husband told her wife to try Jos University Teaching Hospital, where it was discovered after a scan that she had one kidney; that the other one was missing.
“The report came to us and to the entire community as a shock. This man has betrayed the trust the community has in him. I cannot count the number of people in this community that this man has operated on. This incident has caused confusion in the community. Those he had operated on at one time or another are now jittery. We have been advising people that have been coming to us to go for tests at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) and other certified hospitals.
Alhaji Baba therefore called on the police to extend their investigation beyond the woman whose case exposed the fake doctor. He emphasised the need to get to the root of the matter to deter others engaging in such a dubious act,” he said.