TREATMENT FOR GUNSHOT VICTIMS
Victims should be treated promptly, with or without police report
In a society where incidents of ‘stray bullets’ are almost becoming a norm and where many lives are endangered daily because of street violence and cult wars, to insist on police report in cases of medical emergency is patently wrong. But despite the ‘Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Act, 2017’ which compels every hospital in Nigeria to provide immediate medical attention with or without police clearance to any person with gunshot wounds, many victims are still dying in hospitals for lack of care.
A recent case involved an Abuja-based lawyer who was shot in the presence of some of his family members. Although he survived the attack, medical personnel at all the hospitals to which he was taken refused to admit him for treatment because he had bullet wounds and his family members could not provide a police report. Following his death, the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA- SPIDEL) vowed to use his case to fight for the rights of such victims, even though nothing has happened in that direction. While medical personnel complain of police harassment despite the law, the attendant effect has been grave on the society with the loss of several innocent lives.
Before the recent 2017 legislation signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, the misinterpretation of the provision of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provision) Act, Cap 398 of 1984 had led to the death of several innocent Nigerians. Part of the act states: “It shall be the duty of any person, hospital or clinic that admits, treats or administers drug to any person suspected of having bullet wounds to immediately report the matter to the police…It shall be an offence, punishable under this Act for any person to knowingly house, shelter, or give quarters to any person who has committed an offence under Section (2) of this Act.”
While there is nowhere in the act which barred attending to gunshot victims, even if they are armed robbery suspects, there were several instances when doctors were brutalised by the police and arrested for performing their professional duty for treating gunshot victims. But it has also been established that many doctors simply latch on to this to insist on police report where timely and effective response to emergency victims could mean the difference between life and death.
When Ms Nkiruka Onyejeocha, the current Minister of State, Labour and Productivity, sponsored the bill for the compulsory treatment and care for victims of gunshot wounds in the House of Representatives many years ago, she argued that during medical emergencies, saving lives should be the first duty at any hospital whether private or public. “The issue of conditional access to medication by victims of gunshot in Nigeria has generated thorny arguments among scholars, policymakers, medical practitioners and the general public”, said Onyejeocha at the time. “The central thesis of the argument revolves around the issue of saving lives vis-à-vis the provision of the law.”
Two years ago, the current First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, proposed an amendment bill which among others, sought to establish the Medical Emergency Assistance Fund to cover the treatment of victims of gunshot, knife wounds, and other life-threatening emergencies. “It is shocking that despite the act, the flagrant disregard of human life continues unabated; it is particularly sad that we continue to let brilliant and skillful mind go to waste, in what are apparently avoidable deaths,” she said while leading debate on the issue. “In a country where emergency response is almost non-existent, and getting victims to hospital is already burdensome, it is sad that where the victims make it to a hospital alive, they are still denied treatment and left to die.” Well said.
