Doctors Close A Main Hospital In Nigeria

Doctors have closed the main hospital in Nigeria's north-eastern city of Maiduguri in protest at alleged police assaults on staff and patients.

They say officers became angry because the hospital mortuary was too full to take the bodies of colleagues killed by suspected Islam's militants.

Doctors have therefore decided not to reopen the hospital to new patients until the government provided them with security to do their work in safety, But the police have not yet commented.

Maiduguri is the capital of Borno state, where the Islam's group Boko Haram is based and where it has waged a violent insurgency to create an Islamic state since 2010.

Hospital vandalised, according to Dr. Akpufouma Pemu, the general secretary of the Nigerian Medical Association.

Fifty-five people died this week, during (a) before-dawn raid by suspected Boko Haram fighters to free prisoners in Bama, a town some 70km from Maiduguri. A police station, military barracks and other government buildings were burned to the ground in the assault. On Thursday, some of the slain bodies were taken to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, but medical staff say angry scenes broke out when the police were told the mortuary was unable to accommodate all of the corpses.

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) reported that the siege at the hospital lasted for about five hours. "This mayhem unleashed on innocent health workers of the hospital, including the acting chief medical director of the hospital, led to the vandalising of the hospital properties, as well as health workers and patients of the hospital sustaining various degrees of injuries."

One doctor's leg was broken and another doctor was slapped, the president of the resident doctors, Dr. Yahaya Muhammed, said the hospital gates were then closed and no new patients were admitted until the authorities provided security.

Dr. Akpufouma Pemu, the Nigerian Medical Association's (NMA) secretary general, said the (Hippocratic) oath by which doctors usual swear to uphold professional standards was important, but then the doctors needed to be alive to care for their patients. "Dead people don't keep to oaths."

He said the life of the doctor is endangered so there is need for them to get some assurances from the security forces that any health worker who enters the hospital is safe, will not be harassed, will not be brutalised.

Boko Haram's violence has killed at least 2,000 people in northern and parts of Nigeria.

FRANCIS TAWIAH (Duisburg - Germany)

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