Fake doctors infect hospitals

Hours later, the doctor’s day was getting in full swing. He tossed back greeting with the careless ease of a busy man. Long white coat swept around his feet as he stalked the hospital corridors.The undercover agent stalked him, called out to him. The doctor deigned to respond. Both men shook hands, and the agent […]

Hours later, the doctor’s day was getting in full swing. He tossed back greeting with the careless ease of a busy man. Long white coat swept around his feet as he stalked the hospital corridors.
The undercover agent stalked him, called out to him. The doctor deigned to respond. Both men shook hands, and the agent tightened the hold. He hitched his head toward the gate, where two armed policemen stood watching them. “Come with me, and there won’t be trouble,” the agent said.
The doctor, a Ghanaian, had come into the country, acquired spurious papers and taken up work in Lagos State health ministry. Tighter-and increasingly dangerous-control by inspectors of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) is shedding light on the country’s problems with quack doctors.
Many have come to light through reports by poorly treated patients, but the numbers are overwhelming inspectors going after rogues with scalpels.
This year alone, at least 40 cases are currently in court involving quack doctors on prosecution.
Some 32 cases are open, and eight of them are in Lagos. The state has been nicknamed ‘the den of quack doctors’. It is a growing clique of increasing organisation and sophistication.
Public health system across the country has had fake doctors beat all civil-service checks to stay on books for years.
A man identified as Martin Ugwu managed to work at the federal health ministry’s headquarters-the heart of Nigeria’s health system-for nearly 10 years, using medical licence suspected to have been stolen off his childhood friend.
Another worked in the health ministry of Cross River for five years, until he was uncovered.
Police began prosecuting a Cameroonian, Wembe Martins Duclarie, in Ondo State after it got information about a network of hospitals operating a handful of branches in four settlements in the state.
“We then checked and discovered that they were operating illegally because all hospitals must apply for registration with the ministry and must be duly certified,” said Dr Obaado Olatubosun, director of hospital services in Ondo.
Duclarie, 30, got a two-year prison sentence after trial at a magistrate’s court mid-June.
Quacks will have some paper to show, but the white coat is important to them, inspectors have said.
Inspectors are providing witness in the prosecution of a houseboy who took over his master’s clinic upon his death.
He was a regular sight at the hospital, where he donned lab coats and helped out with auxiliary work when his master lived.
He is alleged to have killed his master’s doctor son to get the deceased’s medical credentials, gradually flushed out the clinic’s entire staff, then recruited new hands, mostly temps and auxiliary, and took on the full status of a medical director. But his behaviour tipped his hand.
“If someone doesn’t behave like a doctor, make a report. That little suspicion can give him away,” says Dr Henry Okwuokenye, who heads the inspectorate unit of MDCN. “There is nothing wrong about reporting a doctor to us.”
Whatever goes on in a doctor’s office is confidential, and stays that way until a complaint is lodged. Private hospitals have a murkier veil over them.
Angwa Enyi Sunday worked at Alpha Hospital in Nasarawa town, seeing patients and earning up to N250,000 a month.
He was uncovered only after his competence came under question by the hospital, which called his method of practice “crude.”
Alpha wrote MDCN, which keeps a database of all doctors, to verify Sunday’s registration.  The unique folio number Sunday used was on the regulator’s database, but it belonged to another person, a Dr Okeoluwa Adeniran Olubunmi, staff of Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Abeokuta.
Sunday would later tell investigators the documents were sold him by one Emeka Obiano, whom he met at a hospital in Enugu where he learned “medicine” before he was helped to become a doctor.
Investigators with police to pick him up described him as “very confident, arrogant, always in haste to use the word ‘doctor’.”
The trouble with quack doctors is they fall outside the control of the national medical regulator and its tribunal which tries doctors accused of malpractice. Police takes up prosecution of fake doctors but prosecution record is sketchy.
“We have cases that don’t receive good enough attention. Some are granted bail and [they] jump bail,” according to the inspectorate, which traverses the country to appear as prosecution witness.
Trial has stalled in others, and prosecution witnesses from the council hardly get informed about court appearance dates. In May, it was forced to petition the country’s inspector-general of police when Ugwu was released from police custody hours after he was arrested.
The case of a man who opened a “clinic” in an Abuja settlement where he worked as the community’s doctor for nearly eight years is yet to go through full prosecution. And the Ghanaian mentioned at the outset has jumped bail.