That YouTube surgery in Owerri

STRANGE things happen all the time, but the recent  tragic incident that allegedly took place at a private hospital in Owerri, Imo State, is too bewildering to even think about. According to the story, strange in every purport, certain ‘doctors’ caused the death of a pregnant woman and her unborn baby by performing a Caesarean section under the guardianship of a YouTube tutorial! The bereaved husband, Onyekachi Eze, narrated the harrowing experience in a video shared on Instagram by a Nollywood producer, one Stanley Ontop. According to Eze, he had taken his wife, who was in labour, to the hospital, where doctors informed him that she required an emergency Caesarean section as she was bleeding. As it turned out, however, that was the beginning of his ordeal. Hear him: “The female doctor called another doctor to come and operate on her. Right in my presence, they were using their phones to watch a YouTube video on how to perform surgery. I lost my wife and my baby during the process.” As public outrage intensified, the police reportedly intervened, arresting the owner of the hospital and some nurses, while the doctors responsible for the botched surgery reportedly absconded, with the police intensifying efforts to track them down.

For years, fake doctors have wreaked untold havoc across the country. Conducting wrong diagnoses and giving wrong prescriptions, supervising botched surgeries and conducting death-inducing abortions, among other acts of criminality, these ‘doctors’ preside over the death of millions of health seekers, taking advantage of the lax regulatory environment in the country. Last year, a quack doctor was arrested in Plateau State after causing untold damage to members of his host community for years. In May last year while reacting to the arrest of a fake medical doctor who operated as Medical Director of the Skylink Medical Centre situated at Ako-Okuta Block Industry in Ikorodu, Lagos State, the First Vice Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Lagos chapter, Dr Saidi Babajide, said 50 percent of doctors in Lagos suburbs were  fake. A team of detectives had recovered suspected forged certificates, namely Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, and Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria registration, both of which the suspect, whose actual academic qualification was the Senior Secondary Certificate, confessed to having obtained electronically. In Osun State, another SSCE holder, one Saheed Oladiti, was arrested by the Osun State command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) over the death of a pregnant woman in Ororuwo town who had developed complications that led to her eventual demise.

Countless numbers of health facilities run by fake doctors exit across the country even as the genuine healthcare practitioners exit the country in droves. Only recently, some  Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of teaching hospitals across the country drew attention to the massive emigration of health workers. On its part, the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) added to the picture of gloom in the health sector by indicating that only 6,000 consultants were left in the country. As we noted in previous editorials, between 2021 and 2023, over 2,000 doctors reportedly left Nigeria’s shores, bringing the doctor-to-patient ratio to a sad 1: 9,083 instead of the 1:600 recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).According to the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), six out of ten Nigerian doctors plan to leave the country for better opportunities. Fake doctors are only too eager to latch unto the lacuna created by the exit of these licensed healthcare professionals.

Working with the professional associations in the health sector as well as the security agencies, governments at all levels must take quack and fake doctors out of circulation. Typically, quack doctors lack professional legitimacy: they cannot provide evidence of registration with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), registration certificates, practicing licenses and identification cards. And where they can produce these documents, they are usually fake, and will be exposed when subjected to authenticity checks. In conduct and deportment, these non-doctors act in strange, unprofessional ways, operate in poorly equipped, make-shift structures that lack even basic medical equipment, and  they often charge a pittance to treat severe medical cases. They do not make any referrals to specialists and specialist hospitals, knowing that they will be easily busted. Sadly, in a limited number of cases, even real doctors are said to operate clinics and hospitals essentially staffed by auxiliary nurses who make calls to them to enquire about what to do when patients present themselves for check-ups and treatment. It is a terrible situation which the government has to treat with extreme urgency and severity.

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In the current case, it is distressing that a woman and her unborn baby came to a sad end because certain quack doctors chose to play ping-pong with human life. The situation is, to say the least, an indictment on the authorities. Was the hospital in question registered by the government? If not, how then was it able to operate without official scrutiny, and for how long? If it was registered, did the government exercise due diligence before licensing it to deal with human lives? Does the government, working with the relevant organisations, including the health ministry, conduct periodic checks to ensure that even the properly licensed hospitals are acting in comformity with the laid-down rules? Who are the ‘doctors’ involved in this case and for how long had they been conducting YouTube-led surgeries? Should Mr Eze not even have sensed trouble when the said ‘doctors’ began searching for surgery videos on YouTube? Are there more horrendous stories of victims which are yet to come to light?

The Imo State government  and the police must unravel this case. They must ensure that justice is done. Quackery is a persistent problem across all professions but professional organisations like the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) seem to take the issue more seriously than others. The NMA must redouble its efforts at rooting out quackery within the medical profession. It must uphold professional ethics and tackle quackery with everything at its lawful disposal. Doctors watching social media videos and practising what they see on innocent people deserve to spend the rest of their years behind bars, if not subjected to the hangman’s noose.