Tribunal Suspends Kebbi Doctor For Amputating Baby In Womb

A tribunal has suspended a Kebbi doctor for 6 months for amputating a baby in the womb, following his erroneous misdiagnosis and alleged negligence. Dr Jamilu Muhammad who worked at Martha Bamaiyi General Hospital in Zuru, Kebbi, had “erroneously diagnosed” that his patient Fatima Danjuma’s baby had died in the womb and needed to be evacuated in 2017.

However the tribunal of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria who gathered that the foetus was found to be alive while the surgery was already on and a prolapsed upper limb already amputated, ruled on the petition for “unethical behaviour” which was filed with the council in May 2017. The tribunal chairman Abba Hassan who announced that the Kebbi doctor has been suspended for amputating a baby in the womb, ruled that Muhammad conducted himself “infamously in a professional respect contrary” to the council’s code of medical ethics.

Muhammad who was suspended pending the outcome of his trial, however pleaded guilty and asked for leniency at his trial. Muhammad who is one of 14 doctors facing trial at the tribunal for a range of offences, was however told by the tribunal that he had been on suspension for a period longer than the six-month sentence and “deemed to have served and exhausted the prescribed term of suspension” imposed by his sentence.