The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has cautioned Nigerians against harassing or intimidating healthcare workers, emphasising that medical personnel should not be blamed for every death recorded in hospitals.
Prof. Afekhide-Ernest Omoti, President of the association, said this in an interview with reporters in Abuja on Wednesday, noting that a legal framework now exists to address such acts.
He said harassment and intimidation of health workers had been common in the past, but offenders would now be prosecuted under the National Policy Against Intimidation and Harassment of Healthcare Workers.
Omoti said the issue gained prominence following an incident in Akwa Ibom, adding that NMA officials had engaged the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare on the growing trend.
“I had the privilege of representing doctors in a committee set up by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to address the issue. We completed our work and submitted the report.
“A policy has now been introduced to tackle the problem. It is known as the National Policy Against Intimidation and Harassment of Healthcare Workers,” he said.
According to him, the policy places responsibility on hospitals to provide adequate security for healthcare workers and ensure such incidents are prevented within their facilities.
“The hospitals are to ensure that whoever does such an act is adequately prosecuted, and the person or group of people pays adequate compensation to the healthcare workers.”
He added that the policy also outlines the responsibilities of healthcare professionals toward patients and has contributed to a significant reduction in reported incidents.
“Before this policy, such incidents occurred two or three times monthly. Security personnel, patients and their relatives were often involved in the harassment of health workers.
“Most of the time, it was due to miscommunication or misconception. You can’t expect that everybody who comes to the hospital, no matter how bad their condition is, must survive.
“So the fact that you are grieving doesn’t mean you take your anger out on the doctor or the healthcare professional,” he said.
Omoti said no one had the right to assault healthcare workers or damage their property, noting that some perpetrators even trailed health workers to their vehicles and vandalised them.
According to him, many offenders act out of grief after losing relatives and wrongly direct their anger at doctors, as though medical personnel were responsible for the deaths.
He explained that many of the affected patients were already in critical condition and that the inability to resuscitate them was not unique to Nigeria but a reality worldwide.
The NMA president said harassment had long existed in hospitals, but the increasing frequency of attacks on doctors and, sometimes, nurses was a relatively recent development.
He said hospitals had begun installing Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to improve surveillance and provide evidence in such cases, while advocating wider deployment in emergency units.
Omoti also called for increased public education to help patients and their relatives better understand hospital procedures and realities, thereby reducing misconceptions that often triggered confrontations.
