Dealing With Medical Misdiagnosis

A recent news report had it that a reputable health technology company, Royal Philips, has declared its readiness to tackle wrong clinical diagnosis in the country.
The company intends to achieve this through its fully integrated radiology solutions which it claims will provide early detection and clinical intervention, and reduce long-term costs in health care in Nigeria and other West African countries.
The story caught my attention because my nephew was a victim of wrong medical diagnosis not too long ago. The boy who just relocated to Port Harcourt with his parents was down with fever. His mother took him to a nearby clinic at Azuabie after the first aid treatment given to him yielded no result.
At the clinic, they met an Indian doctor who diagnosed malaria and typhoid fever and gave him drugs which he was to take for three days. For the three days the drugs lasted, the fever subsided, only to resume in earnest the following day. This time, the boy was vigorously shivering and could hardly stand up.
The boy was taken back to the clinic but the doctor insisted there was nothing wrong with him.
Meanwhile, there hadn’t been any laboratory test to ascertain the actual problem. After much insistence on a lab test by the mother, the doctor then instructed that a blood sample be taken from the boy for a lab test. To cut the long story short, my nephew almost died as they continued administering typhoid drugs on him.
Thanks to a kind-hearted neighbour who saw the poor state of the boy and directed them to a hospital at Cocaine Village, Rumuogba. There, it was discovered that he was suffering from anaemia which was caused by poorly treated malaria.
Many Nigerians have been sent to their early graves because of doctors’ misdiagnoses, while others are groaning with irreversible conditions. An associate of mine suffered from severe abdominal pain and painful menstruation for over five years. She visited several hospitals here in Nigeria where several diagnoses were carried out.
Some diagnosed ulcer, others “ordinary stomach pain”. She lived in pain all these years until her family was able to raise money to send her to Singapore where proper diagnosis was done and she was permanently cured.
We can still remember the case of the late human rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who died of cancer of the lungs seven years ago after being erroneously diagnosed and treated for pneumonia for over one year by doctors in Nigeria. Eventually, when he was moved abroad for proper medical attention as his condition worsened, it was discovered that he had cancer of the lungs, which led to his death.
Definitely, misdiagnosis is not peculiar to Nigeria. There are recorded cases of poor diagnosis in many other countries of the world, but the rate at which it occurs in Nigeria is very alarming and worrisome and calls for urgent attention. Many doctors engage in trial and error method in discharging their professional duties.
The Nigeria Medical Association and other stakeholders in the health sector cannot afford to fold their arms while poor, innocent Nigerians are daily sent to their untimely graves.
The truth is that there are lots of people who have no business being in the health profession. These people see Medicine as a fast way of making money instead of a means of rendering humanitarian services. Doctors should not be drawn to the profession by materialism but by the desire to save lives. That is the only thing that will help them to be meticulous, humble and sincere in admitting lack of competence when necessary. A situation where a doctor claims to know it all does not help matters.
A medical consultant recently decried a current ugly trend where parents force their children to study Medicine irrespective of whether they have the interest or not. This really portends great danger to Nigerians.
The most worrisome is that many hospitals in the country are also being run by quacks.
Medical misdiagnosis, indeed, poses great danger to patients. It shows lack of confidence on the part of the doctors while also making patients lose confidence in them.
It is, therefore, imperative that serious measures must be put in place to curb this negligence. The NMA must devise a means of ridding the association of quacks and ensuring that professionalism prevails in their practice.
Most importantly, patients and the entire Nigerian citizens must realise that misdiagnosis is a criminal offence. It is a crime which all of us must fight against at all cost.

Calista Ezeaku