HEFAMAA Moves To Stamp Out Quackery

Kazeem Ugbodaga

The Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency, HEFAMAA, has begun aggressive grassroots campaign to stamp out quackery in the health sector of the state.

 The agency took it campaign to Epe area of Lagos, southwest Nigeria last week in a bid to eradicate quackery.

The town hall grassroots meeting is conceived as a one-stop solution by HEFAMAA to stop quackery in all its ramifications in Lagos health sector through grassroots sensitization meetings which is rotating through all Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas, LCDA, of the State.

The grassroots meetings, which started last year in Lagos commenced at Isolo LCDA.So far, meetings had been held in Ejigbo LCDA, Ikorodu Local Government Area and most recently, in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos.

The grassroots meetings, according to the Chairman of HEFAMAA Board, Dr. Omotayo Bello, aside serving as a platform for enlightening stakeholders and the populace on the functions of HEFAMAA and its resolve to stamp out quackery, also served as interactive fora to elicit ideas and feedbacks to efforts and policy implementation of the government in its health sector.

He said as part of strategies to put an end to quackery, the agency, in the process of enlightening the public on the inherent dangers of allowing continued practice of quackery in their domain, had enlisted community members to be its eyes and ears at the grassroots level since the quacks and residents live side-by-side in the same community.

Bello said that to smoothen access and elicit quick response to reports of those perpetuating quackery in their community, suspicious healthcare operators should be reported to HEFAMAA via text messages directly to numbers of senior government functionaries printed on the back page of the HEFAMAA handbook which was distributed at the venue of meetings.

Meanwhile, HEFAMAA also recently hosted the first healthcare professionals regulatory body forum.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Health, Dr. Yewande Adeshina, who met with Health Care Professional Regulatory Bodies operating in Lagos, stated that government was resolute in its plans to resolve all conflicts affecting healthcare professional regulatory bodies operating in Lagos so that they could all work in harmony with one another to regulate the various aspects of healthcare in Lagos, especially where their functions overlapped.

She urged regulators not to exceed their jurisprudence and stay within their designated roles to avoid intrusion into responsibilities of other professional bodies, adding that registration of all medical health professionals with HEFAMAA was not only necessary, but mandatory.

Adeshina added that the primary purpose of regulation was to eradicate quackery in the healthcare sector of Lagos State for which HEFAMAA was set up.

The healthcare professionals at the event were the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria, Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria, Traditional Medicine Board, Medical Rehabilitation Therapist Board, Optometrist and Dispensary Optician Registration Board and Radiographer’s Board, among others.