By Chijioke Kingsley
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Nigerian Doctors under the umbrella of Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), have denied the reports of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which alleged that doctors take bribes from patients before attending to them.
MDCAN said the report is not only untrue but insulting to doctors who have sacrificed all to remain in the country to offer services to poor Nigerians who cannot afford treatment abroad.
It would be recalled that the NBS released a report suggesting that
42 per cent of health workers received bribes to speed up the procedure and 15 per cent also took bribes to make the finalization of the procedure possible.
This was presented by the Data, Analytics and Statistics Section of the Research and Trend Analysis Branch, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, while the survey implementation, fieldwork, data preparation was done by the NBS, our correspondent reports.
However, MDCAN, refuting the report said in a statement signed on Wednesday, by the President of the Association, Prof. Mohammed Aminu Mohammed, challenged NBS to provide the methodology relied upon to come up with such a report as well as the geographical area covered to warrant their conclusion.
“The NBS report is false and an attempt to denigrate and dent the image and reputations of doctors before the general public.
“Even though Nigerian doctors are among the least paid in the world, they are hard working and will not condescend so low to demand bribes from patients before treatment.
“This report is like giving a dog a bad name to hang it.
“”We are not the only workers in the health institutions, either public or private”, Mohammed said.
He continued: “To us these unfounded allegations are baseless and totally unacceptable. We are demanding for a total retraction of the so called report which is meant to portray Nigerian doctors in a bad light.
“NBS should avail us access to the methodology and the geographical area they have covered to warrant this conclusion.
“These are some of the issues we felt that their conclusion is grossly unfair to Nigerian doctors despite our hard-work and resilience to remain in the country to practice”.
“In most health institutions, doctors are the minority and patients come to the health facilities only to see doctors, but would have passed through other departments before getting to the doctor.
“By the time the patients are seeing the doctors in their consulting rooms for the first time, they would have gone through layers of other health and non health workers. Where then will the doctors be discussing and demanding bribes with the patients as alleged by NBS.
“There is no place that does not have bad eggs, but to label hard working and long-suffering Nigerian doctors who shunned greener pastures abroad to stay back to serve in the country as bribe takers is unfair and very unfortunate.
“However, if there are people that are demanding and taking bribes from patients and their relatives in health facilities in the country, such groups of health workers or non-health workers must be identified so that they will be punished by relevant authorities.
The association added that there are different groups of trained health professionals like doctors, nurses, midwives, laboratory Scientists Pharmacists working in hospitals as well as non health professionals.
“There are also different cadre of staff ranging from the security personnel, so if any group is desirous of conducting such an important research they should have stated the different categories of workers instead of lumping them as doctors, nurses and midwives.
“All that we are doing in the country is sacrifice, it is not that we can not move out for greener pastures, but we decided to be patriotic and remain in the country despite so many challenges. We are the ones that shoulder the responsibilities of those doctors who have left the shore of this country. So for any group to wake up and label Nigerian doctors as corrupt and bribe takers is discouraging”, Mohammed said.
MDCAN consequently demand apology from the NBS to be published in the print and electronic media as their report is defamatory.
