Four Indian doctors in Nigeria - Yogesh Chandra, Dinesh Kumar, Hemant Jingar, and Kapil Chouhan – have said they are being forced to treat Ebola patients against their will.
They also charged their employers with taking away their passports to ensure that the doctors couldn’t leave the country.
They claimed they were threatened to not leave Primus Hospital in the Nigerian capital Abuja. With the virus spreading across the country, the doctors feared for their lives.
According to the Hindustan Times, Chouhan said “We haven’t been provided with any security kits. Our passports have been impounded. When we spoke to the Indian high commission, we were asked to come to the mission. But we were stopped by guards from leaving the hospital,”
The CEO of Primus Super Speciality Hospital India Dr ND Khurana, however, appeared to not agree with the demands of the four doctors. He said..
“We are in touch with our Abuja branch. These doctors are afraid of contracting the dreaded disease but it is against medical morality. One doctor has left the service, which will be treated as impropriety.”
But Dr Narendra Saini, secretary of the Indian Medical Association, countered Khurana, arguing that a doctor’s personal choice should dictate if they want to work in a particular country.
The Federal Government yesterday dismissed media report that some Indian medical doctors claimed they were forced to treat some Ebola patients in a private hospital in Abuja.
The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who spoke to journalists about the development in Abuja argued that the report on the doctors’ claim were false, noting that it was misleading and capable of causing panic among members of the public.
He flayed the spate of unverified reports on issues relating to the prevalence of the virus in Nigeria and urged the media to act responsibly.
His words, “I read a story in one of the dailies that some Indian doctors were allegedly forced here in Abuja to treat Ebola cases.
“The story is false, fictitious, nothing of such has taken place, it is completely fabricated.
“The doctors’ names were not published, the hospitals that claimed they have been forced in Abuja to treat the Ebola cases were not published,” Mr. Maku stressed.
The information minister noted that there was a clear case of attempts by some persons to slander the nation and advised the media to check their facts before reporting.
“Please, we are urging newspapers, radio and television houses and even the social media to cross check your stories before you publish them.’’
He informed that the virus was not endemic to Nigeria and had never been found anywhere in Nigeria, stressing that it was imported by a Liberian-American into Nigeria.
Maku submitted that newspapers in the country must be careful, “the media have done very well but we must not give a leeway for anybody to begin to slander us.
“We are appealing to the Nigerian media, we should not allow our nation to be slandered; this nation operates under the strictest rules of public health.
“If our Nigerian doctors who are on strike were not forced, why should we force any other person? Nobody has ever been forced to treat patients with the virus,” he said.
While stressing that the Federal Government would continue to follow best practices in the management of tested and verified cases of Ebola in Nigeria, the Minister called for public support, vigilance and understanding in the campaign against the spread of the virus.
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