Increasing cases of bogus doctors cause for worry

Kenyans are a worried lot with the increasing cases of fake doctors in our hospitals. Just the other day, a man who had been pretending to be a doctor was arrested at Kisii Referral Hospital where he had reportedly worked for six months.

First, how do these people get into these hospitals and why is it that it is only public hospitals that are affected? Who pays these bogus doctors because they don’t spend all that time in hospital then go home and eat stones? No wonder we are having many cases of misdiagnosis.

Many patients are also being mishandled. In the Kisii case, even though the management denied the fake doctor had not handled major medical cases, he had been assigned duties. He also had access, not just to the main pharmacy but to the drugs store as well. He may have been stealing and selling the drugs, who knows.

It will be interesting to see what action the hospital will take against the manager who ‘hired’ the fake doctor after he said he was brought in by a senior official. Time has come for the ministry of Health and the doctors’ union to step up efforts to ensure patients are safe in hospitals.

The ministry and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) must fix this problem because when they are caught, they spoil the name of the entire profession. Those found to have hired the quacks must also be severely punished because they are endangering the lives of patients.

The KMPDU Act should also be strengthened. The Sh10,000 fine or one-year jail term for anyone found practising medicine, surgery or dentistry, without a licence, is too lenient. Stakeholders must make this crime too expensive for anyone to even think of engaging in it. [Nora Mwashida, Taita Taveta].