Some residents in South-South region have decried the rate of wrong diagnosis in Nigeria and called for stricter guidelines and enforcement of tougher sanctions to improve diagnostic standards across the country.
The residents made the remark in a survey in Port Harcourt, Akwa Ibom and Cross River.
They identified incorrect diagnosis, wrong drug prescriptions, and inappropriate treatments as common medical errors while frowning at the poor attitude of health workers.
Narrating her ordeal in Rivers, Mrs Faith Onovo, a mother of five, recounted how she sought medical attention for persistent headaches and blurry vision at a reputable private hospital in Port Harcourt.
She said that after undergoing several tests, she was diagnosed with migraines and given medication but months later, her symptoms worsened.
Onovo said that she consulted another hospital where she was diagnosed with a brain tumour but by then, “it was too late as the tumour had progressed to an inoperable stage.”
Similarly, Chinda Iwhnurohna, 48, lamented the tragic ordeal of his wife, Mercy, who, he said, suffered from severe stomach pain.
He said that the doctor, after the result of the lab showed ulcer, prescribed medication but the pain did not stop.
“After months of suffering, we discovered it was actually appendicitis, which had already ruptured; sadly, she did not survive the surgery,” he said.
On her part, Monalisa Tamuno, a boutique owner in Port Harcourt, described the financial strain her family faced following the misdiagnosis of her late brother’s heart condition.
She said that they spent everything they had on treatments and surgeries, believing he had a heart problem.
Tamuno said that later diagnosis showed that he had pulmonary embolism which is a condition of one or more arteries in the lungs being blocked by a blood clot, “but by then, we lost him.
“Now, we are not just mourning him; we are also struggling to survive financially,” Tamuno added.
Reacting, a medical consultant at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Dr Chinazor James, attributed the major contributor of misdiagnosis to quackery and inadequate training.
She also highlighted the proliferation of unregistered medical laboratories, many of which were being operated by unqualified personnel.
She said that the country had a significant number of unregistered medical laboratories and many were operated by quacks conducting illegal medical practices.
James attributed this to weak governance structures, fragile regulatory frameworks, and a lack of political will to enforce proper medical standards.
“To address this, healthcare regulators must ensure that all medical laboratories are duly registered and closely monitored.
“The government must ensure that only trained professionals run these facilities, as accuracy, precision, and reproducibility in medical laboratory results are crucial,” James stated.
Another medical doctor, Dr Olugbenga Akinyemi called for stronger regulations and enforcement of diagnostic standards.
He noted that weak oversight had turned Nigeria into a dumping ground for substandard medical kits, diagnostic equipment, and chemical reagents.
“These low-quality medical supplies are often purchased and used even by well-intentioned practitioners, leading to inaccurate test results, misdiagnosis, and ultimately, fatal consequences,” Akinyemi warned.
He said that even when practitioners were genuine and had good intentions to conduct proper testing and treatment, the low-quality medical supplies would make nonsense of their profession.
He urged the government to conduct regular inspections of medical laboratories and ensure they were operating with modern equipment while mandating frequent training for laboratory scientists.
Similarly, a laboratory scientist, George Horsfall blamed both human and systemic reasons as factors responsible for diagnostic errors, listing them as overburdened hospitals, inadequate diagnostic tools, poor infrastructure, among others.
He called for the establishment of national accreditation standards for medical laboratories to ensure consistency and reliability in test results.
“Regular audits and assessments of laboratory practices would enforce these standards and help identify areas that require improvement,” Horsfall added.
In Akwa Ibom, Mr Bassey Effiong a victim of wrong diagnosis narrated how he was diagnosed and treated for hypertension for three years, only to see another medical consultant who diagnosed him with Parkinson disease.
Effiong described the experience as “very ugly” as he incured a lot of financial burden to treat himself, urging governments to equip hospitals with best medical practitioners and standard diagnostic equipment to avoid wrong diagnosis.
A Consultant Nephrologist, University of Uyo Teaching Hospital (UUTH), Dr Effiong Akpan described wrong diagnosis as a crime against humanity.
He also condemned what he described as ‘’trial and error’’ method of treatment, stressing that medical diagnosis should be exact to avoid wastage and mortality.
The medical consultant added that “human life is not like machine that can be repaired or replaced again,” saying that wrong diagnosis and wrong interpretation of test results exposed patients to unnecessary anxiety.
He explained that the anxiety could lead to other undesirable conditions such as heart diseases, hypertension, depression, suicidal tendencies, withdrawal from normal daily task and abuse of drugs.
“Patients, erroneously tested positive to highly infectious diseases like Hepatitis, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, may suffer undue stigmatisation which in turn can lead to depression, panic attacks, anxiety and refusal to access healthcare.
“Wrong test result when it is false negative can limit early treatment of many diseases and wrong diagnosis can deplete public trust in diagnosis efficacy and cause individuals to resort to quacks for healthcare needs.
“A patient who is positive for HIV and the result states that he or she is negative can live erroneously with the disease which not only reduces his or her chances of survival, but also spread the disease to other susceptible individuals.
Akpan, however, attributed poor diagnosis and false interpretation of results to poor equipment in hospitals, inadequate training of personnel managing the equipment and poor judgement by medical officers.
He called for the training and retraining of medical personnel to ensure they were up to date with current practice for a medical treatment.
In his contribution, Dr Aniekan Peter, Akwa Ibom Chairman of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), condemned wrong diagnosis and false interpretation of results, attributing them mostly to quacks and not trained medical practitioners.
He said the NMA would do everything possible to eradicate quackery from the profession to maintain best standard in practice, attributing the major cause of wrong diagnosis to quackery problems,
“We have people out there pretending to be medical doctors, when exactly they have nothing to do in the medical profession; they are doing general harm to patients and we must fight the menace.”
The medical officer, however, said that obsolete equipment in hospitals also caused wrong diagnosis and false interpretation of results and called for routine equipment standardisation for accurate test reading and diagnosis.
“The equipment must be standardised in such a way that if they sent the same sample to any other standard laboratory, it should have the same reading,” he said.
A Pharmacist, Public Health Specialist and President, Nigeria Hepatitis Network, Dr Nseabasi Ekanem decried the expired drugs administration, saying, “it produces harmful derivatives of their original compounds.”
He said this could lead to severe nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity and could also react adversely with the human tissues, organs and system, causing organ failure, system collapse and premature death.
Ekanem said that implications of administering expired drugs on patients would cause patients not receive the optimal dose required to manage or treat their ailments which would lead to treatment failure and complications.
“When expired drugs are taken concomitantly with other medications, they can actually severely potentiate or block the actions of the other medications which results in very undesirable outcomes,” he said.
He also added that wrong diagnosis could be partly due to healthcare personnel with low capacity to conduct laboratory investigations or could partly be due to outdated diagnosis tools or techniques.
“For example, Widal Test is no longer the gold standard in the diagnosis of Typhoid Fever caused by Salmonella typhi as the test result may be wrong,
So while substandard health personnel in the health sector is a contributing challenge, it is not the only setback,” he said.
Ekanem called for capacity building for healthcare workers, improved diagnostic techniques, provision of up-to-date diagnostic kits and collaboration between clinicians and medical laboratory personnels to reduce wrong diagnosis.
Also speaking, a nurse in the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Mrs Affiong Zeal said that wrong consequences of diagnosis could lead to physical and emotional harm thereby increasing the patient’s suffering.
She said that uncertainty and delay in diagnosis could cause significant emotional distress, anxiety, and frustration for patients and their families while incorrect treatments could lead to side effects, complications, and permanent disabilities.
Zeal said that the patients might experience financial strain due to prolonged illness and recovery from complications which could have long-lasting effects on their economic well-being.
“In cases where a misdiagnosis causes significant harm, patients may have grounds to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the responsible healthcare provider,” she said.
A Cardiologist in Immanuel General Hospital at Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom, Dr Edward Ekpenyong said that the proximity to healthcare services was one of the hindrances inherent in accessing healthcare services in Nigeria.
“Some people don’t live close to where they have healthcare facilities and inadequate facility leads to increase in mortality rate in country,” Ekpenyong said.
In Cross River, an ex-patient of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH),Mr Johnson Udeh decried the poor attitude of health workers, saying it is the greatest challenge in the sector.
He accused the hospital of practicing preferential treatment in the treatment of patients, alleging, ‘’if you know a top management staff who intervenes for you, you will get treated
“If not, you would be kept for hours; the only thing they are interested in is for you to go and pay for all sorts of things.
“Let’s tell ourselves the truth the hospital has no drugs, the consultants are not available even on their days of consulting and when they are, most of them are only interested in referring you to their personal clinics.
“My neighbor had to leave the because on a particular day he observed they were using rechargeable torchlight in the theater for operation.
“And the private clinic he was referred to was owned by the same doctor carrying out the operation in the theater with a touch light.
Udeh alleged that some consultants in the hospital owned many private clinics in Calabar while lecturing in the University of Calabar Medical College, making them not to be available in the hospital.
He pointed out the nonchalant attitude among healthcare workers in Nigeria, claiming that they were not dedicated to the job at all.
Similarly, Mr Joseph Edet, a civil servant with the University of Cross River, described as “legendary” what he perceived as rot in some hospitals while narrating his ordeal at a prominent public hospital in Calabar.
“I was asked to buy fuel to power the generator for the theatre in the hospital for my wife’s surgery, after paying for the services.
“I raised an alarm the next day, they did not provide fuel to carry out the surgery on my wife,” he said.
Edet also accused some health workers in the hospital of stealing drugs especially when a patient staying in the hospital for a day before a cesarean session was not watchful.
Responding to some of the challenges, Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Cross River Chapter, Dr Ukam Edadi said the healthcare workers in Nigeria lacked an enabling environment to do their jobs.
Edadi said the Nigerian healthcare sector had quality manpower, that was why they performed well abroad but in Nigeria, the doctors were poorly motivated, no facilities and infrastructure such as electricity among others.
He also noted that there were no training and retraining of healthcare personnels to update their knowledge, claiming that most of the things they achieved were what they fought for probably through industrial action.
On the issue of consultants not being available, the PRO said there was nowhere in the world where consultants come to sit by the bedside of patients because that was the job of the nurses.
Edadi, who is also a doctor at UCTH, said that consultants had their days to carry out ward-round and clinics, adding that overseas, sometimes, it took up to four weeks before a patient could see a consultant.
He said that the same Nigerians who got this kind of treatment abroad would come to complain the non-availability of consultant, adding that senior registrars and house officers were always around to see patients.
NAN
