HWNHIGHLIGHT: Four Indian doctors in Nigeria have said they are being forced to treat Ebola patients against their will, the Indian Hindustan Times newspaper reported on its website yesterday. They also charged their employers with taking away their passports to ensure that the doctors couldn’t leave the country. The doctors said they were threatened to not leave the private hospital where they work in Abuja. With the virus spreading in Nigeria, the doctors feared for their lives. The report said they spoke to Hindustan – a sister concern of Hindustan Times – over phone, email and Whatsapp. “We haven’t been provided with any security kits. Our passports have been impounded. When we spoke to Indian high commission, we were asked to come to the mission. But we were stopped by guards from leaving the hospital”, one of the doctors said, quoted in the Hindustan Times report. He added that the Indian doctors were forced to work since local physicians – who were on a strike – refused to come back to work when the Ebola epidemic broke out. Indian government sources, however, told HT that following the intervention of the Indian mission in Nigeria, the doctors have agreed to work in the hospital for a few more days and then leave the country. Though Nigerian authorities claimed there were no Ebola cases in Abuja, wife of one of the doctors alleged that patients from Lagos –which has registered 10 Ebola cases – were admitted at the Abuja private hospital. The CEO of the hospital in India, however, appeared to not agree with the demands of the four doctors. “We are in touch with our Abuja branch. These doctors are afraid of contracting the dreaded disease but it is against medical morality. One doctor has left the service, which will be treated as impropriety,” he said. But Dr Narendra Saini, secretary of the Indian Medical Association, countered this, arguing that a doctor’s personal choice should dictate if they want to work in a particular country. [HWN/DTrust].
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:42:50 +0000
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