Advertising Hospitals, Doctors Unethical – Council

Ruby Leo

23 May 2011

The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) has said that advertisement by hospitals and doctors of their services is against the code of conduct of the medical practice in Nigeria.

Registrar of the MDCN Dr. Abdulmumini Ibrahim who disclosed this in Abuja, warned hospitals in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) who were flouting the code by advertising their services.

“It is against the medical ethics to do advertisement. There is a restricted kind of advertisement which was described in our code of ethics,” Ibrahim said.

“Nigeria is not one of those country’s that subscribe to advertisement by hospitals,” adding that the country is not yet developed for adverts by hospitals.

He added that the MDCN will fully prosecute any hospital that breaches the country’s Code of Medical Ethics.

He said, “There are sanctions for hospitals that break these codes.

But where you have a situation where the hospitals involved are new in the country and these are the kind of people government wants to invest the country, it will not be in the interest of the profession to sanctions them immediately. We have to caution them, if they don’t abide by wise counsel as practitioners as well, then we will prosecute them according to law.”

Ibrahim also informed that the council has created awareness over the Continued Professional Development (CPD), adding that doctors would have to be updating their knowledge in order to give their best to patients.

“We adopted as a policy that from 2012, for renewal of license for a doctor to practice in this country, he must have attained 20 credit units by way of updating his knowledge which he/she submits along with his form for renewal of license,” he said.

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