THE NEW HEALTH LAW AND THE SALE OF HUMAN PARTS NIGERIANS WAKE-UP ! ! ! It will be recalled that the New Health Act 2015 was heralded by a gale of industrial crises and heated discontent among the various professions in the health sector that threatened to grind the sector to a halt, a situation which the new law was expected to address in earnest. The level of the new law’s success in addressing these problems may not be known until the law eventually goes into operation, but the anomalies and ill considerations which Mr Femi Falana has cited were hardly anticipated. Specifically, Mr Falana (SAN), according to media reports, cited sections 48 and 51 of the new law which were furnished with exception clauses that empower medical professionals to legally remove vital organs from a patient without the consent of either the patient or their next of kin. Formerly, medical practitioners were required to obtain consent from patients or their next of kin before such surgical procedures could be executed. It is unlikely that the lawyer’s observation was presumptuous, crying wolf where there was none, or flippant and it is certainly unthinkable that a law that is expected to solve some problems would primarily introduce fresh ones at the level of drafting. As the law is now, it definitely violates the human rights of patients who ironically it purports to protect, and it simply beggars belief that the National Assembly would commit such an error despite its unfettered access to the available expertise in legal drafting. A patient in need of surgery as a life-saving option is presumed to be at the mercy of the surgeon who has the awesome powers to make crucial decisions that could save or terminate the life of the patient. If such a surgeon is also legally empowered to remove vital organs without the consent of the patient or his/her next of kin, it means that the patient has literally been deprived of his inalienable right to life and the right to seek redress as a consequence of any breach. Obviously, this submission is being made at no prejudice to the professional competence or judgement of the medical practitioners in the country’s hospitals; but then, the law should also protect the fundamental rights of the patients who stand to lose everything in the worst scenario. The law should be deemed to be defective to the extent of its negligence of the patients’ interest in its provisions. The guises of ‘emergency cases’ or ‘medical investigations’, as crucially considerable as they may be, are certainly not sufficient for the law to summarily suspend the fundamental rights of the patients — who could even include the medical practitioners in certain imaginable circumstances themselves. Already, Nigerians for the most part live under very hostile conditions in which their basic rights are routinely abused on a daily basis without the faintest hope of either enforcement or redress, and it would be absurd to legally tilt the odds against them any further. The common folk who cannot afford the cost of litigation either because they are plagued by ignorance or poverty should not have their woes unduly increased by any law. In a not-too-distant past, not a few citizens lost vital organs to a racket that specialised in their sale to a ready market abroad. And in any case, a country with a flourishing criminal industry of kidnappings and ritual murders ought not to literally license the nefarious activities of some quacks in medics’ garbs who might be easily lured by the criminal but lucrative trade of selling human parts. The new health law of 2015 may have addressed some of the contentious issues plaguing the health sector, but we are persuaded that sections 48 and 51 of the law still need some revision in order to tie the loose ends, which presumably foreclose the choices of patients and give awesome powers of life and death to medical practitioners, as it is absolutely necessary to still require them to obtain their patients’ or next of kin’s consent before commencing on surgery. It will not be asking for too much to request the National Assembly to look at the new law more closely and educate the people on its provisions with the guaranty that the interests of the ordinary citizens have been taken into adequate consideration even though the president has already signed it into law.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:15:18 +0000
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