The Lagos State government, through its Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency, has shut Vedic Lifecare Hospital in Lekki, for allegedly engaging unlicensed expatriates.
Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr. Abiola Idowu, explained that the hospital located at Plot 6, Olabanji Olajide Street, Lekki, was sealed for engaging expatriate staff who have not been certified to practice in Nigeria.
“The facility was shut down for engaging three foreign doctors and a nurse with unverified certificates and without licenses from any professional body,” she disclosed in a statement posted on the website of Lagos State Government.
Vedic Lifecare Hospital was jointly established by Nigerian and Indian businessmen in 2013 at an estimated cost of $122million and prides itself to be “a medical facility aimed at improving the health care within the country with the assistance of Manipal Hospitals. It renders a broad range of current therapeutic, prophylactic and health-improving services in one building”.
Idowu, however, stated that the closure of the hospital does not affect the in-patients already admitted, stressing that the agency is aware that some facilities are engaging Foreign-Based Transient Medical Doctors who come into the State, stay for a period of time to provide medical care to patients and perform medical procedures before returning to their respective countries.
The Chairman of HEFAMAA Governing Board, Dr. Yemisi Solanke-Koya, noted that the practice raises consequential concerns regarding the regulatory oversight of healthcare in the State.
The concerns, according to her, focus on whether the facilities where the FBTMDs provide medical care are registered with and meet the standards required by HEFAMAA; whether the FBTMDs themselves possess the requisite credentials and experience required to practice the designated specialities they travel to the State for and whether the provisions made for the realm of continuity of care of the patients when the FBTMDs leave the State meet the standard of care.
The Chairman warned that hospitals in Lagos should desist from using foreigners whose certificates and licenses have not been verified by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
– Media Report