SAYS IT’S STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES ON ORGAN TRANSPLANT ARE LEGALLY BACKING
The management of Alliance Hospital has said the organization’s lawyers have been instructed to write to Daily Trust newspaper to retract the defamatory publication against it within a specific period or face legal action.
This instruction is based on the Daily Trust newspaper publication on its cover story, an article titled: How Abuja syndicates lured minor for kidney harvest on Saturday, August 19th, 2023 and another article Investigation: ‘Inside Abuja’s Kidney ‘Market’ Where the Rich Prey on The Poor. on Sunday 10th December 2023.
A statement signed by DR Christopher Otabor the Medical Director
Alliance Hospital and Services Ltd on 11th December, 2023 revealed that this same article was written by the same staff of the newspaper house, and described it as a campaign of calumny against Alliance Hospital, saying enough is enough.
Dr. Otabor while dwelling on the background of Alliance Hospital said it aimed at responding to the huge burden of kidney failure in Nigeria and the need to develop a world-class kidney transplant center to prolong the lives of kidney failure patients, established in 2017.
Additionally, since the establishment of the kidney transplant unit, the hospital has successfully responded to patients’ quest against kidney failure, making sure that they have the needed treatment to survive.
OUR PROCEDUREAs a rule, kidney recipients source for their donors and present them to the hospital for screening for compatibility and fitness for donation. After the screening, we proceed to ensure they meet the legal requirements which include:1. Donors must be 1year1 year2. The donor must sign consent in the presence of two adult witnesses.3. The donor is expected to swear an affidavit stating his age and affirming that the decision to donate is by free will and there is no compulsion or financial inducement.4. The relationship of the donor to the recipient.The law governing organ transplants in Nigeria is scanty and limited in depth. It only requires the donor to be above 18 years of age and the fact that there is no financial inducement for the donation.We have followed the above protocol strictly for all the kidney transplant cases done by the hospital.
Dr. Otabor therefore urged the Daily Trust Newspaper to dig deep and do diligence to every report before publication to unravel the key players in the trade as Alliance Hospital has nothing to do with illegal organ harvesting.
Stressing that the Daily Trust newspaper was spoken to by the aggrieved lawyer.
Armed with her biased position, a female reporter (probably Lami Sadiq) visited the hospital and spoke with the medical director on the case in question. She was given all the facts.A few days later specifically on the 19th of August, 2023, the first headline publication on the story debuted. The story was a vindictive, biased, and obvious vendetta against the hospital.This second publication of 10th December is in line with the first and it is a peddler of truth. While we appreciate the need for investigative journalism to get to the root of societal problems, we must also be circumspect in order not to appear biased and miss the mark athosthosecome to equity must come with clean hands.From the report, it is obvious that there is an organ market out there that Alliance Hospital is not part of and can never condescend to transact in.The writer of the article took a position against the hospital, pronounced a guilty verdict on, it, and called for punishment for thehospitathe hospital regard to regard to.THE CASE IN QUESTIONOn 5th May 2023, one Lawal Idris representing Lawal Idris Law Firm in Abuja wrote a petition to the FCT Commissioner of Police stating that one Emmanuel Melody, a staff of Alliance Hospital lured his client Oluwatobi Adebayo a 17year boy to the hospital to harvest his kidney and Alliance Hospital paid the boy (donor) only #1,000,000 (One Million Naira). The lawyer also claimed in his petition that due investigations were not done to ascertain the compatibility and fitness of the boy for surgery. He prayed the Police Commissioner to investigate the matter and bring the culprits to book.The Police Commissioner ordered the arrest of some members of our kidney transplant team and instituted a high-level investigation team to investigate the claims. The Police found no merit in the petition as the key suspect, Emmanuel Melody was proven not to be a staff of Alliance Hospital and they also confirmed from the court that the donor, Oluwatobi Adebayo swore to an affidavit stating that he was over 18 years of age at the time of the surgery. An affidavit stating age and donation on free will without monetary inducement is a key requirement for the hospital.Furthermore, there is no iota of evidence of monetary transactions between the hospital, its staff, and the donors or their representatives.Having failed with the Police, the same lawyer Mr Lawal Idris contacted one Mr Bakare, director of the criminal justice department of the legal aid council to write a letter to the medical director of Alliance Hospital on 2nd of August, 2023 demanding the sum of #100,000,000 (One Hundred Million naira) as compensation for the unlawful harvest of a minor kidney and #50,000,000 (Fifty Million Naira) for his father Mr. Adedoyin Salman for psychological and emotional trauma caused him. They threatened to go to court if we did not meet their demand in 21 days.The Medical Director of Alliance Hospital swiftly responded to the letter from the Aid Council. In his reply, he stated the fact that the hospital is not interested in paying any compensation. They were advised to go to court if they so wished.In response to our rebuttal, Mr Lawal Idris and his co-travelers called for a press conference to brief the press on their false claims.
