Posted on: Tue 19-12-2023

Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has charged the National Assembly to review laws governing organ transplants in the country.

It advised the legislature to think of modifying extant legislations to beat charlatans to their game of transacting in the illegal organ chain.

Chairman of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter of NMA, Dr Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi, who made the call yesterday in Abuja, while addressing an allegation levelled against Alliance Hospital within city, said the association is worried by the news making the rounds on social media that some doctors engage in unwholesome practices, including harvesting and transplantation of solid organs like kidneys.

He submitted that doctors, under the Hippocratic Oath, have a duty to protect the rights and dignity of patients even at death.

Ugwuanyi added that the body was interrogating the hospital management for balancing, admitting that the medical facility was one of the pioneers of transplants in the country.

He explained that the issue could be addressed in the media, stating that formal ways of handling such matters.

Medical Director of the Alliance Hospital and Services Ltd, Dr Christopher Otabor, who dismissed the allegations as a campaign of calumny, insisted that the facility has no hand in illegal organ harvesting.

He said that he had instructed his lawyers to file a N1 billion defamation suit.

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