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Medical tribunal charges 14 doctors with misconduct
THE Medical and Dental Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal (MDPDT) has charged 14 medical doctors with professional negligence and advertising.
Registrar, Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), Dr. Celestine Okwudili Ezeani, in an interview last week, told The Guardian that advertising and negligence are the main charges of the tribunal.
He said: "Apart from advertising and negligence, there are many other acts we can charge doctors with. But basically, the public are the ones to report us. A judge does not go and start looking for criminals. If a doctor does something to upset a patient, that patient should report to us and then we will start investigation. If found guilty, penalties we can give to doctors range from cautioning them, admonishing to suspending them and striking their names out of the register. It depends on the gravity. The maximum punishment is to strike their names out of the register. In between, you have admonition and suspension. So it depends on what the doctor has done".
On the status of the tribunal, Ezeani said, "the council or tribunal does not charge anybody but every case that we have to handle goes to the tribunal, which has the status of a high court. That is why the judgement of this tribunal can be appealed in the court of appeal, no other place. So we do not charge anybody to court. If you are convicted in our tribunal and the aggrieved party so feel, he can report you to a regular court for criminal negligence. If you accuse a doctor of criminal act, we will ask you to go to a regular court. This tribunal does not handle criminal case. We do not have the jurisdiction to do that. But we, at the tribunal do not charge anybody to court".
The registrar, MDCN, also gave reasons why doctors should not advertise. "Doctors are not supposed to advertise, the only thing they can do is to give information. A doctor can say we have a hospital at a certain street, we provide this type of services. But the moment the doctor starts saying, we have a clinic at number so of this street, this is who is running it and you know he is a very competent doctor, we have this service, you know our services is second to none.
"This is called advertising and this is very big trouble. The reason is that the doctor that is able to achieve maximum advertising advantage is not necessarily the best doctor. So we do not want doctors to do that. That will encourage unhealthy rivalry in the profession, if everyone starts advertising there will be chaos, before long we will forget the real essence of our profession and start doing marketing.
"We do not want that and this applies to orthodox doctors and alternative practitioners because we are regulating them. All these advertisement in the newspapers contravenes the law and once we have a proper report or complaint, we will try them".
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