The Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria has rejected the proposed bill seeking a six-month jail term or a fine of up to N300,000 for hospitals and healthcare providers who declined treatment for emergency patients.
MDCAN, which consists of specialists and senior doctors, said the lawmakers should rather legislate to build systems that could save patients and not the one to penalise doctors for trying to save lives.
PUNCH Healthwise reports that the Senate is currently considering a bill to jail doctors and healthcare facilities that violate proposed emergency treatment standards.
The bill also seeks to compel public and private hospitals to assess emergency patients within 15 minutes of arrival, commence initial stabilisation within 30 minutes and complete referrals to other facilities within three hours where necessary.
Sponsored by Senator Abdulaziz Yar’Adua, the proposed legislation seeks to amend the National Health Act, 2014, to establish enforceable standards for emergency medical treatment, healthcare workers’ training and patient referral procedures.
While rejecting the proposed jail terms in a statement on Friday, the MDCAN President, Prof. Apollos Ndukuba, said criminalising doctors for systemic issues won’t solve the challenge.
“No Nigerian should die because he or she could not pay, or could not get emergency care. Every life matters. Emergency care is a right, not a privilege.
“However, we must state with equal firmness: Criminalising doctors for systemic failures they did not create will not save lives. It will kill the health system,” he said.
The MDCAN president said that while Section 20(1) of the National Health Act, 2014 already provides that a health care provider or health worker shall not refuse emergency patients, the provision is not adequate.
According to him, the Act imposes a duty without providing the means.
“It does not create a funded Emergency Medical Treatment Fund that actually works. It does not define emergency, or who bears the cost. Who pays for blood, oxygen, surgery, ICU care, drugs when the patient is unconscious, unknown, or indigent? The Act is silent. In practice, the doctor and the hospital are forced to absorb the cost, or watch the patient die,” Ndukuba said.
The MDCAN president stressed that a “law that commands without enabling is a law that punishes the innocent”.
Furthermore, Ndukuba listed chronic underfunding, manpower crisis, non-payment and bad debts, insecurity and violence, lack of equipment and other challenges as systemic issues affecting emergency care.
He said, “We must be honest with Nigerians. Doctors do not decline emergency care out of wickedness. They decline because the system has collapsed:
“Jailing a doctor for not having blood that the government did not provide is like jailing a teacher for not having chalk.”
The MDCAN president urges Nigeria, through NASS, to adopt what works from countries like the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Ghana, India, among others, and not what punishes.
“In no serious country is an individual doctor jailed simply because a collapsed system could not provide emergency care. Criminal law is reserved for wilful, proven negligence and gross misconduct after due investigation by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, not for systemic failure,” he said.
Ndukuba, however, said that while the MDCAN rejects proposed jail terms for doctors, the specialists support universal access to emergency care for all Nigerians, irrespective of tribe, religion, status, or ability to pay.
“MDCAN rejects in totality the proposal to impose jail terms on doctors for declining emergency treatment where the facility lacks capacity, consumables, or where the State has failed to provide funding.
“Such a law, if passed, will accelerate the exodus of doctors, force hospitals to shut down emergency units, and push doctors into defensive practice and early retirement. Nigerians will suffer more, not less,” he said.
The MDCAN president urged the FG and NASS to fund emergency care properly, enact an emergency medical services act, implement universal health coverage, protect health workers, increase the health budget, strengthen regulation, and engage stakeholders.
“Nigerians deserve a system where no one dies at the gate of a hospital. Doctors also deserve a system where they are not made scapegoats for government failure.
“Let us build a system that enables doctors to save lives, not one that threatens them for trying. MDCAN remains committed to patient safety, ethical practice, and partnership with the government to build a humane, functional, and just health system,” he said.
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