Medical doctors in the country have tasked the 10th National Assembly to formulate a law that will severely punish patients’ relatives and criminals who attack health workers in the course of carrying out their duties.
The physicians also demanded that such a law should criminalise such an offence, noting that attacks on health workers by relatives of deceased patients have become rampant and worrisome.
In a report on ‘Workplace Violence against Doctors’ published by the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors, no fewer than 345 incidents of violence against Nigerian doctors were reported in 2022.
The report stated that 74 per cent of the attacks required medical attention, while 15 per cent were life-threatening.
It noted that 65 per cent of the attacks were due to patient loss (death); 56 per cent due to patients not being attended to promptly (workload); 41 per cent due to poor communication (workload); and 28 per cent due to inadequate security and surveillance.
The World Health Organisation says violence against health workers is unacceptable, warning that such violence has not only a negative impact on the psychological and physical well-being of healthcare staff but can also affect their job motivation.
The global health body says between 8.0 and 38 per cent of health workers suffer physical violence at some point in their careers, mostly perpetrated by patients and visitors.
“Many more are threatened or exposed to verbal aggression. Most violence is perpetrated by patients and visitors. Also in disaster and conflict situations, health workers may become targets.
“As a consequence, this violence compromises the quality of care and puts healthcare provision at risk. It also leads to immense financial loss in the health sector”, the WHO stated.
The physicians, who spoke during an exclusive interview with PUNCH Healthwise, pleaded with the leadership of the National Assembly to treat the matter with the urgency it deserves, lamenting that threats against healthcare workers kept rising and are underreported.
National President of HCPAN, Dr. Austin Aipoh, told our correspondent that the law was long overdue, lamenting that attacks on health practitioners by patients’ relatives have assumed a worrisome dimension in recent times.
Describing the attack as a highly dangerous trend, Aipoh said doctors in the country are becoming an endangered species, as they have become frequent targets of brutal, vicious attacks by families of patients and criminals.
He said, “Attacks on health workers by relatives of deceased patients have been on but not on this large scale.
“The truth is that it has been happening but not of this magnitude. It has reached this level where a relative of a patient assaults doctors or health workers physically or takes the life of a doctor.
“It is very appalling. When there is a law, Nigerians and the public will abide by it. But where there is none, people will do things the way they like and nobody suffers any consequences.”
The physician said establishing a law that will make it an offence to attack health workers in the course of carrying out their duties would help to checkmate the excesses of patients’ relatives.
