Indian neuro-surgeon arrested for practising without licence

 

An Indian Neurosurgeon, Dr. Raju Bhuvaneswara Basina, has been arrested by officials of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, MDCN, for operating without a practice licence.

The 53-year-old doctor was arrested by the Police from Apo Resettlement Division, on Monday, at Asokoro District Hospital in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, following a fresh round of onslaught by the MDCN against quackery.

He was said to have been conducting neurosurgical operations at Asokoro District Hospital for more than a year without licence from MDCN, the regulating agency for doctors and dentists in the country.

Basina was performing a craniotomy (brain surgery) in his hospital when police and MDCN’s inspectorate officials, led by Dr. Henry Okwuokenye, arrived at the hospital for his arrest.

The team was also accompanied by President of the Guild of Medical Directors, Dr. Tony Phillips.
Chief Medical Director of Asokoro Hospital, Dr. Ahmadu Abubakar, had to prevail on officials of MDCN to wait for him to finish his surgery to pick him up.

Okwuokenye, who is Head (Inspectorate Unit) of MDCN, told journalists that investigations had revealed that Basina had already worked as a doctor at Asokoro Hospital for many months before eventually applying for a licence in August last year.

He said:  “The MDCN is yet to process Basina’s application while response from our counterpart in India’s medical regulating agency is pending.”

 

But Basina has continued to work on contract, insisting that he had applied.

According to him, mere application does not constitute temporary licence meant for doctors trained outside Nigeria.

Okwuokenye added that Basina should have waited for response before practising.

”We wrote a letter to India to tell us about the status and licence of Basina but they are yet to get back to us. Although he claimed to have applied, mere application is not a licence to practice.

“When we asked him if a doctor could practice in India without licence, he said no. Why then is he practising in Nigeria? Time has come for us to sanitise the system, Nigeria is not a banana republic where anything can happen,” he stated.

Among documents Basina filed in his application were photocopies of credentials from Nazims Institute of Medical Sciences and Rangaraya Medical College.

As at the time of this report, it was not clear if Basina had been granted bail by the police.

During talks with regulatory officials at the hospital, Basina insisted he trained in the United States, among other places, but added that getting a practice licence in Nigeria was too long and inconvenient.

At a point, he insisted that practicing licences were easily ordered “over the phone” in India or taken in less than two days in the US.

“Can I do this in India? I go to india, I apply, and while waiting for them, I start practising?” Okwuokenye queried.

Okwuokenye insisted that an “application was not equivalent to licence”, pointing out that there were other Indian and foreign doctors practicing in Nigeria with due licensing.

He said the MDCN was committed to clamping down on undue practice by persons claiming to be doctors in new crackdown ordered by its Registrar/CEO, Dr. Abdulmumini Ibrahim.

The council revealed that, at least, three separate cases involving improper licencing were facing prosecution in court.

Basina is in his second one-year contract at the hospital but his arrest questions how his contract was renewed, his services hired or posted to Asokoro DH without a practice licence.

The FCT Administration, through its establishment unit and health secretariat, centrally hires and posts doctors to its district hospitals, managed by the Hospitals Management Board.