The Nigerian Dental and Medical Council of Nigeria has warned owners of private clinics to desist from employing the services of expatriates who were not duly certified by the council. Dr Okuokenye Henry, Head of the Inspectorate Department of the council, issued the warning in Gombe on Thursday when he inspected Madina Specialist Eye Centre and Diagnostic. He said the measure became necessary to prevent quack medical personnel from putting the lives of innocent Nigerian patients in danger. “Initially, when an expatriate comes to Nigeria to practice, he or she must meet some basic requirements. “If he is carrying another country’s certificate, he must attend four months course organised by our council and write an examination before he will be given a license to practice in Nigeria,’’ Henry explained.

He said this enabled the council to identify quacks in the profession, and such persons would be handed over to the law enforcement agencies.
“The council is empowered by law to regulate the practice of medicine by ensuring standard in the country,” he said. Henry said the council sent him from Abuja to Madina Hospital for an inspection because the council received petitions that an Ophthalmologist, Dr Najeeb Ur-Rahaman Abro, engaged by the hospital was not qualified. “The ophthalmologist, a Pakistani, did not have a license to practice in Nigeria but he went ahead and started practicing,’’ he said. The head of the inspectorate department, however, directed the proprietor of the hospital to dismiss the doctor or face the wrath of the law.