Investigation: Fake Doctor Who Ran Hospital for 10 Years also Had Two Others

 

Investigations have revealed Victor Akpan, the man who ran a hospital in Gwarimpa using a forged practice licence, also operated two other hospitals in different parts of Abuja for years.

One was in Kado, the other in Kabusa. Rules of the Private Health Establishment and Monitoring Committee (PHEMC) which licenses private health outfits in Abuja, prohibits more than two — a main office and annex — within each area council.

The outfit in Kado belonged originally to a woman named as Ekaette but was named Luna, alongside a second outfit in Kabusa, and run under the same Luna name Akpan used to register his hospital in 2006.

It is now known Akpan visited as a “consultant” to do scheduled caesarean sections for a backlog of patients at both hospitals, according to PHEMC.

“Not treating humans”

His main Luna outfit at Gwarimpa village was described as “dilapidated, as if he’s not treating human beings there,” said PHEMC registrar Ibrahim Tata on his first visit there. “I advised him to put it in shape and he started renovation.”

Tata said he noticed the trio of names shortly after. “We closed them [Kabusa and Kado] and asked them to process their own registration separately.” The Kabusa outfit is in progress but the outfit at Kado is already registered.

The committee’s focus turned on Luna at Gwarimpa village. “I started following him and discovered in his practice he has been careless. I started suspecting him but when I look at his documents, he has MDCN (Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria) registration. Not until MDCN gave me a call and said there is a suspect doctor working in the FCT.”

MDCN’s investigation led to Akpan’s arrest on June 10, and he admitted to police that he paid N15,000 to get a forged practice licence and used it to front as a surgeon when registering Luna in the FCT.

“The name of the doctor operating is different from the documentation made: that’s how we really knew that the person there is a quack,” said Dr Abdulmumini Ibrahim, registrar of MDCN.

Akpan claimed to have studied alternative medicine in a 2002 application to get MDCN licence to practice homeopathy. The school is said to have been shut down for not meeting regulations.

“Up till now, we have not received any response to the letters we wrote to the school where he said he trained. That may also turn out to be fake documentation,” said Ibrahim. “I believe with this unveiling, things may be facing up.”

Surgery or carpentry?

As far as both MDCN and PHEMC know, a school of homeopathy does not teach orthodox medicine and doesn’t have surgery on its curriculum. Now both are questioning where and how Akpan got the skill sets to do gynaecological surgeries.

MDCN didn’t know about the surgeries but posits Akpan could have gained knowledge from assisting in procedures — as a nurse, community health extension worker, theatre assistant – watching surgeries being done.

“We have cases in rural areas where hospital attendants claim the knowledge they don’t have and go to the extent of posing as doctors,” said Ibrahim.

MDCN still isn’t sure whether Akpan did the surgeries himself or got help. It also doesn’t know the extent of his success or failure. But patients from Kado and Kabusa to Gwarimpa knew him as a surgeon and paid for his services.

None has stepped forward to comment on their time visiting his office since he was arrested on June 10. And it is uncertain the extent of risks hundreds of patients who visited Luna since 2006 could have being exposed to.

But photos of his surgeries are pasted across a wall in an office Akpan used for consultation at Luna in Gwarimpa.

Tata considers it overkill. “It is not every case you have to display. That gives us a clue there is something fishy. All doctors do surgeries but they don’t plaster their walls with their surgeries. It is only the interesting ones.”

“For CS, he has been doing it, because I remember when he was covering Ekaette,” Tata remembered.

“She has been telling me Akpan had been doing CS. That time it didn’t occur to me he is fake. If someone can sit down and do CS, thinking about forgery is out of the question. Someone who will open a woman up, remove something and close. I mean, you can’t doubt him.”

“Akpan’s case is very interesting. The law enforcement agencies need to investigate further to find out where he got his apprenticeship. It is like someone learning carpentry. Maybe other colleagues are doing similar things or discharging into the system fake doctors who can do some maneouvres or procedures but are not qualified.

“He has already confessed his certificate was forged. That person who helped him has to be traced. For him to succeed with Akpan, it means he may be doing it for others. It is only Akpan happens to be a victim of circumstance.”

Botched case

At least 10 quack doctors have been unveiled this year alone, according to MDCN, but its mandate cover only misconduct of qualified doctors. It can only provide witness evidence when police prosecutes fake doctors.

But investigation into Akpan has stalled. Independent sources say police demanded MDCN officials to pay for profiling, insisting they didn’t have chemicals needed, and transport for the suspect, after he was transferred from Gwarimpa station to the FCT headquarters.

According to Ibrahim, police never officially contacted the council but the council was ready to “mobilize their request.”

Four weeks from June 10 when Akpan was arrested, sources say MDCN officials have not been informed of any moves to arraign or prosecute.

Police spokespeople also claim no knowledge of Akpan or the state of his case, insisting the force’s legal unit was handling it.

But Daily Trust has learnt police have let Akpan go, and he has already visited MDCN twice.

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