Emergency patients: Fix hospitals before punishing health workers - NMA tells NASS

The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has rejected a legislative connection by the National Assembly to enforce fines and imprisonment connected healthcare workers who cull exigency patients, urging lawmakers to compel governments to hole hospitals earlier enacting specified laws.

The president of the association, Prof. Afekhide Ernest Omoti, who stated this successful a connection made disposable to journalists successful Benin City connected Thursday, November 5, 2026, described the projected sanctions arsenic unjust.

Omoti, however, called connected the National Assembly to clasp governments accountable for failing to supply the resources, infrastructure and enabling situation required for effectual exigency aesculapian services.

He urged lawmakers to code the systemic challenges confronting the country's healthcare assemblage alternatively than present punitive measures against wellness professionals.

He noted that the National Health Act, NHA, had already provided a ineligible model for protecting patients requiring exigency aesculapian treatment, stressing that existing provisions prohibit the refusal of exigency care.

He said it was fundamentally unfair to enforce transgression liability connected healthcare workers and hospitals for failing to supply services erstwhile governments had not fulfilled their work to supply the indispensable resources and enabling environment.

The NMA president said the captious question was not needfully the lack of authorities but the nonaccomplishment to instrumentality existing provisions and make the enabling ...