The Menace of Quack doctors In Nigeria.

       

Take a drive through any city or large town in Nigeria and the chances are you will come across numerous privately owned health clinics, doctor's surgeries and hospitals.

      They are so widespread because Nigeria's state-run health system – ranked at 197th out of 200 by the World Health Organisation – is chronically underfunded and so overstretched that it simply cannot meet all the demands made on it. Private medicine fills the gap and in the best cases, at least for those who can afford it, it can provide a valuable alternative service.

     But while there are many legitimate private health providers, there are many more that are completely bogus; unaccredited, unregulated 'quack' doctors - con artists and criminal scammers for the most part - who ruthlessly exploit the credulity, ignorance and desperation of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. Indeed they are so prolific that a survey carried out in Nigeria earlier this year found that more than 50 percent of the population had received 'treatment' from the quacks at one time or another – even people with very serious diseases such as typhoid and malaria.

       But it is something that has long bothered Rosemary Nwaebuni, a reporter who lives and works in Nigeria's Delta State. She has encountered many people who have suffered at the hands of fake doctors, particularly women who have been the victim of botched abortions, and she is frustrated that the authorities have not done more to stamp them out.or this this episode of Africa Investigates, she joined up with Anas Aremeryaw Anas, an award-winning journalist from Ghana, to track down the quacks and gather evidence of their scams.The team took this this and other evidence to Dr Alfred Ebiakofa, a senior medical officer working for the Nigerian Ministry of Health. He had always lacked the resources and proof to go after fake doctors but now was able to act. He called in the police to work with Anas who, as the investigation heads to a climax, devised a dramatic scheme to trap one of Nigeria's most notorious quacks in the act.