The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Edo State council has appealed to the National Assembly to as a matter of urgency ensure the speedy passage of the National Health Bill just as it noted that the delay has contributed to quackery in the medical profession.

The appeal was made yesterday in Benin City, the Edo State capital during an inspection and monitoring of several private health facilities in the state by a team of health practitioners drawn from the state ministry of health led by the state chairman of NMA, Dr. Emmanuel Ighodaro and the director of medical services of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, Edo State branch, Dr. Helen Eboreime.

He said, ‘We want to ensure that the practice is free of quackery and charlatans, the truth of the matter is, because of the vacuum created in terms of manpower, we have a number of individuals who are not qualified to practice going about parading themselves as medical personnel and causing all sorts of damages to the health of the people.

‘If you look at the tertiary health centres, the teaching hospitals, the general hospitals, what they normally receive as patient are mismanaged patients from most of this privately owned hospitals manned by quacks parading themselves as doctors.’

Ighodaro noted that it is part of the NMA’s responsibly to ensure that health facilities ranging from clinics, maternity homes and Nursing homes measure up to the standard applicable in the medical profession and also ensure that quackery is reduced to the barest minimum.