MDCAN denies NBS' bribery allegation against Nigerian doctors

Add as a preferred source

The Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) has denied the statement credited to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that Nigerian doctors and other medical professionals receive bribes from patients before treatment.

Recall that a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics stated 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.

The report titled “Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends The Third Survey on Corruption as Experienced by the Population” 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, and data preparation were done by the NBS.

In a statement signed by its national president, Professor Mohammed Aminu Mohammed, the MDCAN said the NBS’s report was false and also an attempt to denigrate and dent the image and reputation of members of the noble profession before the general public in the country.

According to the association, even though Nigerian doctors are among the least paid in the world, they are hard workers and will not condescend so low to demand bribes from patients before treatment, adding that the report was like giving a dog a bad name purposely to hang it, which was done in bad taste.

“To us, these unfounded allegations are baseless and totally unacceptable. We are demanding a total retraction of the so-called report, which is meant to portray Nigerian doctors in a bad light.”

The MDCAN enjoined the NBS to avail itself of access to the methodology and the geographical area it had covered to warrant the conclusion. “These are some of the issues on which we felt that their conclusion was grossly unfair to Nigerian doctors despite our hard work and resilience to remain in the country to practice.”.

It further explained that by the time the patients are seeing the doctors in their consulting rooms with face-to-face contact for the first time, they will have gone through layers of other health and non-health workers stressing that, where then will the doctors be discussing and demanding bribes with the patients as alleged by NBS?

MDCAN further stated that there is no place that does not have bad eggs, but to label the hard-working and long-suffering Nigerian doctors who shunned greener pastures abroad to stay back to serve in the country and be painted with allegations of bribery is unfair and very unfortunate.

‘ It is important that if there are people who 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.

“There are also different categories of staff, ranging from the security personnel, who stress that if any group is desirous of conducting such important research, they should have stratified the different categories of workers instead of lumping them as doctors, nurses, and midwives.

“All we are doing in the country is sacrificing; it is not that we cannot move out for greener pastures, but we decided to be patriotic and remained in the country despite so many challenges.

“We are the ones who shoulder the responsibilities of those doctors who have left the shores of this country. To wake up one day and label Nigerian doctors as corrupt and bribe-takers is discouraging.

“As law-abiding citizens, we want to give NBS the benefit of the doubt so that they can also avail themselves of our methodology and raw data.

“If we discover that their methodology is right and have significant samples and proportions of Nigeria covered that allowed them to arrive at this conclusion, we can now look inward to see how we can make amends.”

ALSO READ THESE TOP STORIES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE