By Marie-Therese Nanlong
Jos – Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, MDCAN has said the recent report by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that Nigerian doctors and other medical professionals were receiving bribes from patients before treatment is false.
A recent report titled, “Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends Third survey on corruption as experienced by the population”, puts health workers high on the rating of bribe-taking.
MDCAN, in a statement signed by its President Professor Mohammed Mohammed, said the report is false and an attempt to “denigrate, dent the image and reputation of members of this noble profession before the public within and outside the country.”
He dismissed the allegation of bribe-taking adding that “even though Nigerian doctors are among the least paid in the world, they are hard-working and will not stoop so low to demand bribes from patients before treatment.”
The President added, “The report is like giving a dog a bad name purposely to hang him and was done in a bad taste because they are not the only workers that work in health institutions either public or private. To us, this unfounded allegation is baseless and unacceptable. We are demanding a total retraction of the so-called report which is meant to portray Nigerian doctors in a bad light.”
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He asked that the NBS should avail them of access to the methodology and the geographical area they have covered to warrant this conclusion saying, “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.
“By the time the patients are seeing the doctors in their consulting rooms with face-to-face contact 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 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 an allegation of bribery is unfair and very unfortunate…
“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 who shoulder the responsibilities of those doctors who have left the shore 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 us of their methodology and raw data. If we discovered that their methodology is right and have significant samples and proportion of Nigeria covered that allowed them to arrive at this conclusion, we can now look inward to see how we can make amends.”
