Nigerian Hospitals and Gunshot Victims

LawPàdí
LawPàdí
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

We heard in the news a few weeks ago that the Nigerian Senate had passed a law which made it a crime for hospitals to refuse to treat gunshot victims in Nigeria.

We at LawPàdí applaud any new laws that make the lives of Nigerians better, and so this law needs to be commended. However, in commending we must also give our opinion.

Firstly, was this law ever necessary? The law was created to deal with issues where a person who has a gunshot wound would be refused treatment at the hospital until and unless a police report is presented. The hospitals started this practice because at a time, the police begun to harass and in some cases arrest medical workers for treating gunshot victims under the pretext that these gunshot victims were criminals (and had been injured in gun battles with the police) and therefore by treating the patients, they were assisting criminals.

We did our research to identify if there was ever any law which backed this action by the police…and the only law we could locate which dealt with this was the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Act which provided in Section 4, that it shall be the duty of any person, hospital or clinic that admits, treats or administers any drug to any person suspected of having bullet wounds to immediately report the matter to the police; and any person/hospital/clinic which fails to report this shall be guilty of an offence.

So the law says they need to report it, it did not say they need to wait for a report before they administered any treatment. However, the police insisted on this process and the doctors decided to protect themselves by following the ‘report before treatment process’…and this led to the loss of many many lives.

In 2014, the National Health Act was passed, and it provided in Section 2 that a health care provider, health worker or health establishment shall not refuse a person emergency medical treatment for any reason; and a person who contravenes this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine of N100, 000.00 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or to both.

With the passage of that law, you would think that the issue of refusing treatment of gunshot victims would have been put to bed (apologies for the pun). But it wasn’t, after the passage of the law, hospitals still refused to treat victims without a police report.

Therefore in 2016, the House of Reps introduced this bill to categorically deal with the issue and put it to bed: Compulsory Treatment and Care of Victims of Gunshots Bill 2016. It was passed in the House of Reps and sent to the Senate for concurrence. Check out our article on How laws are made in Nigeria to find out what stage in the process this is and what the next steps are for the Bill to become a Law.

Once the bill is finally a Law, there is no excuse for medical practitioners to treat victims, or for the police to harass medical practitioners for treating victims. If a medical practitioner refuses to treat a gunshot victim, they they can be held liable for negligence and can be sued. You can read our article on how to sue for medical negligence in Nigeria here.

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Legal Term of the Day: ‘Concurrence’- refers to the action by which one legislative house agrees to a Bill that the other chamber has initiated and passed.

Regards,

LawPàdí Team

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LawPàdí

LawPàdí

We educate Nigerians about their legal rights and duties in a straight and easy to understand manner.

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