Feel Free To Sue Doctors - Ghana Medical And Dental Council

The Ghana Medical and Dental Council (GMDC) has urged the public to feel free to sue doctors for compensation for wrong diagnosis or other unprofessional conduct.

The Registrar of the council, Dr Eli Atikpui, told the Daily Graphic that although it was right for patients to report doctors to the GMDC, the council could not pay compensation for any harm done.

He said the best it could do was to withdraw the certificate of an offending doctor and cause the issue to be published.

He added that it was the responsibility of the aggrieved person to sue the doctor involved at the law courts for whatever compensation he or she desired if it could be proved that the wrong diagnosis or unprofessional conduct resulted in any harm.

Dr Atikpui also advised proprietors of private clinics and hospitals to request permanent registration and retention certificates from doctors before employing them.

Verification, he added, should be done on such certificates from the council.

Meanwhile, a fake medical practitioner, Richard Brown Afful, has been fined GH¢1,000 by a Circuit Court in Aflao.

He will go to jail for five years if he fails to pay the fine. Afful was charged with false assumption of professional title and practising medicine without the requisite training.

The court, presided over by Group Capt Martin Luther Obeng Ntim (retd), heard that Afful posed as a medical practitioner and secured employment with a hospital in Aflao.

Afful used the name Dr Richard D. Manneh and produced two certificates, one issued on July 27, 2001, qualifying him as a medical officer, and a second certificate, that of a surgeon, was dated July 20, 2004.

Afful's professional proficiency came into doubt a few days on the job when he prescribed wrong medicines for ailments.

The management of the hospital sought clarification from the University of Ghana Medical School and it came out that the suspect's registration number as a doctor belonged to a graduate of the medical school, Dr Richard Kwame Mannah, who passed away in September last year.
 
Dr Mannah was a houseman at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital. Afful was arrested and he admitted that a man who now lived in the United Kingdom forged the certificates for him but he could not remember his name.

Further investigations by the police revealed that Afful had attended many symposia within the country, the last one being “An overview of the HIV situation in Ghana” held on September 7, last year.

Story by Mark-Anthony Vinorkor