AMLSN reiterates doctors own 80% of indicted HMOs

The Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) has insisted that the accused Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) are owned by Nigerian medical doctors.

Besides, the professional body of laboratory scientists challenged the reconstitution of members of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) governing board, describing it and other boards as discriminatorily lopsided against other healthcare professions.

AMLSN, which condemned the widespread horrendous corruption bedeviling the noble motive behind the establishment of NHIS, reminded that regrettable so, is the inherent sharp practices crippling Nigerian health sector, which is solely being run by medical doctors.

The laboratory scientists, in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Dr. Casmir Ifeanyi, after the 197th National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Kano recently, and made available to The Guardian, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to extend searchlight on NHIS beyond the investigative panel to unravel maladministration of resources meant for public health and incorporate anti-graft agencies and men of the Department of State Services (DSS) to conduct a thorough screening of all agencies under the Federal Ministry of Health.

“AMLSN raised the alarm at the inception of the National Health Insurance Scheme over the sequential acts of sabotage against the lofty scheme. Later, it emerged that the enemies of the Nigerian health system, for pecuniary gain, surreptitiously altered the NHIS Act 35 of 1999 and its operational guidelines to provide for global capitation and other sundry obnoxious provisions.

“The rudimentary elements, which propel the crises are the allegedly sharp practices and other untoward activities of the Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) which over 80 per cent is owned by ‘big’ Nigerian doctors,” the statement said.

Casmir, who stated that contrary to the convention, the medical doctors allegedly inflict bias action in the areas of appointment against other health practitioners, said that the AMLSN was worried that “Buhari had tacitly yielded to the whims and caprices of medical doctors.”

He said the President must urgently prove the “detractors wrong” by reconstituting the governing board of Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria (MLSCN) to save the country from increasing cases of quackery, malpractices and wrong diagnosis, occasioning the death of many innocent citizens.

The AMLSN National Publicity Secretary, who claimed that it is clear evidence in pathology laboratory practice globally that pathologists never head laboratory department, regretted that reverse is the case in Nigeria.He, therefore, insisted that continuous super impose of clinicians to head what he considered direct affairs of medical laboratories are outright illegal, misplacement of priority and against standard practice.