Health Minister Warns Medical Practitioners Against Unethical Conduct

Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu
Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu

Medical professionals in the country has been challenged to be dedicated to the code of conduct of their profession in order to achieve quality services and effective delivery to their patients and the society at large, Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu has said, adding that when practitioners are not complying with the ethical standard, the profession and the professional would suffer from such inaction.

The minister gave the challenge at the opening ceremony of the 31st Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria (NARD), which held at Central Hotel, Kano.

“…You will do well therefore, to familiarise yourselves with the code of professional ethics and to avoid those pitfalls that can bring you and the profession into disrepute. I enjoin you to observe those sublime traditions of the profession of medicine that have made it the noblest of all professions,” he charged the participants.

Chukwu also urged them to exhibit the highest level of personal discipline and dignified comportment all the time, adding that they must do everything humanly possible to prevent the encroachment to the profession by charlatans.

“When you do all of these, including an unshakeable commitment to the principles of clinical governance and accountability for your actions or inactions, you shall have assisted the MDCN (Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria) in no small way in regulating medical practice in the country,” he said.

To further strengthen the medical profession, the Minister disclosed that, “…over the past few years strong support was given to the MDCN in curriculum development and the registration and licensing of medical and dental practitioners in the country.”

He added that “a policy has been put in place to ensure that through the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, expatriates doctors who come to offer services in different locations around the country are properly credentialed and registered before they are allow to practice.”

On his part, the Governor of Kano State, Engineer Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, who was represented by the Commissioner of Health, Dr. Abubakar Labaran Nuhu, urged the professionals to always stick to their ethics of practice as that, according to him, was part of the signs of patriotism and nation building.

He further said it was as a result of the importance his administration attached to the medical profession that the state government found it extremely necessary to send students abroad to study both medicine and pharmacy.