Medical ‘Yahoo Yahoo’

hen the news wave of HushPuppi’s arrest hit Nigerian media, many were surprised. Many, like myself, were not. His indictment was a long time coming and I am only surprised it took this long.

Most Nigerians are now familiar with cyber crimes which vary from the random phone call from a bank operative asking for your BVN or the poorly constructed email about a Nigerian prince stranded in faraway Alaska begging you to help ‘unfreeze’ his money which the bank, due to sheer wickedness, is holding onto. Sadly, we have become so accustomed to these scams that they do not make headlines anymore, and so while we go about our daily activities, these con artists continue to come up with new and better ways to rip us off.

Welcome to the world of ‘Medical Yahoo Yahoo’. As in every profession, we have the good eggs and the rotten eggs and medicine is certainly no different. The rotten eggs, unfortunately, leave such a bad stench that the effects of their actions may be felt for generations to come. In the world of Medical fraud- there are generally three types of con artists. The traditional healers, the Junior health workers parading as doctors and the most dangerous- the doctors themselves. Lend me your ear.

A young woman is brought into the labour room, screaming and in obvious painful distress. This is her first pregnancy and her husband and all her relatives are beside themselves with worry. She started having labour pains two hours ago and seems to be progressing slowly as expected for a first-timer. Two hours after she is brought in, she lets out a piercing scream and the baby’s head is seen emerging from the birth canal. The midwives and doctors are shocked. The last time they checked she was 4cm dilated. She eventually delivers the baby but has several lacerations to her cervix and so is bleeding profusely. The bleeding is arrested and the managing team is trying to understand the sudden cause of her precipitated labour when the patient’s mother confesses. She has been giving the young woman ‘rubutu’ to drink. The concoction was given to them by their malam to ‘hasten delivery’. The midwives thought nothing of it at first until an elderly matron demands to see the concoction. At the bottom of the bottle, some whitish granules are seen, sedimented. Investigation reveals the powder to be ‘Misoprostol’ a drug used to cause uterine contraction. So much for ‘rubutu’.

Another scenario is that of a middle-aged man who wants to impress his new bride. He has heard of a traditional medicine man who gives a wonder drug that will make him last for hours! He eagerly ingests the medicine and instead sustains a painful erection that lasts up to three days, causing his family to bring him to the emergency room in tears. When the contents of the concoction he took is examined, it turns out to be Sildenafil (Viagra) in high doses mixed with maize flour. Wonder drug my foot!

However, the cake in this category goes to the ‘Malams’ who give their students Rophynol (roofees) prior to starting the traditional ‘Lazimi’ so that they hallucinate and see a certain dead scholar in the clouds or trees as the case may be. The situation would be funny if it were not so pathetic!

The second category of fraudsters are those who parade as doctors without the medical licence to do so. These are the commonest and can be found in all parts of the world. The elderly hospital attendant who has watched so many surgeries and feels he has earned the right to open a clinic in his locality. The nursing school dropout who has printed a fake medical certificate and operates a maternity hospital in his house. The dental technician parading as a maxillofacial surgeon. The list is endless.

The fate of those unfortunate people who fall victims to these con-artists depends on a lot of things; chief of which is luck. Some are lucky enough to get better, while some like a distant cousin of mine, had her bladder destroyed when a chew masquerading as a nurse forcefully pulled out a baby from her vagina. At the age of 19 years and most likely for the rest of her life, this girl will continue to pee from a tube inserted into a makeshift pouch near her kidneys. While some will ultimately lose their lives. The stench of fraud, like I said, is overpowering.

The golden trophy for fraud, however, goes to the third category. These are the most dangerous category as it is purported by doctors themselves who have undertaken the Hippocratic oath. It saddens me when I hear about scams like ‘washing of blood’, ‘brain resetting’ and ‘open and close surgeries’. These tricks are mostly pulled off at private hospitals where money is the main motive; however, in doing so, like HushPuppi, they are giving a name to so many honest doctors trying to eke out a living through entrepreneurship. A population of over 180million means government hospitals alone cannot cater to the needs of the public. Private facilities are therefore essential.

So what do we do about this Yahoo Yahoo? After HushPuppi, who next?