INVESTIGATION: Deadly quacks: How Benue healthcare workers endanger lives (PART 1)

One of the many laboratory centres in Benue State where hapless patients are either maimed or killed. (ICIR)

MANY indigent residents of Benue State are dying at the hands of unqualified medical personnel due to shortage of qualified medical doctors in most rural communities in the state. Auxiliary nurses and laboratory scientists across the state posing as medical doctors often send hapless patients to their early graves. Ameh EJEKWONYILO reports.

AGBO John, a university undergraduate was lucky to have cheated death, but his younger sister, Stella, who was a high school student, died at the hands of a laboratory scientist who posed as a medical doctor.

Stella John was a senior secondary school student at the Gateway Excel College at Ogeneago in Ogbadibo Local Government Area of Benue State.

“Stella was a highly intelligent student, who looked out for other people,”  Mary Ochoche described her teenage niece whose life came to a tragic end in February 2018.

Narrating late Stella’s ordeal,  Ochoche said the deceased’s dream of becoming a medical doctor in order to cater for the health needs of her family and community was cut short by  Friday Onuh, a laboratory scientist at the Federal Medical Centre, Efekwo, Otukpa.

“In the first week of February 2018, I took Stella, my niece, to Able Hands Diagnostic Laboratory and Maternity Clinic here at Old Otupka Branch, Ogbadibo LGA of Benue State. She was operated upon by Mr. Friday Onuh, the ‘doctor’ in charge of the hospital. The surgery that was performed on Stella was to correct an inflammation which the doctor said was appendicitis.

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