Medical negligence in Nigeria came to the fore when author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie accused a Lagos hospital of negligence after the death of one of her 21-month-old twin boys. Nkanu Nnamdi died on 6 January 2026 after a brief illness.
Friday Okonofua, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and vice-president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, answers some questions about medical negligence in the country and how it can be curbed.
What is medical negligence?
Medical negligence is said to occur when a healthcare professional or a health institution fails to provide the expected standard of care, thereby causing harm to the patient. It can also be defined as improper, unskilled, or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or any other healthcare professional.
In Nigeria, the standard of care is set by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. The Rules of Professional Conduct for Medical and Dental Practitioners, also known as the Code of Medical Ethics, stipulate several instances that would amount to medical negligence.
It can include wrong diagnosis, incorrect or inappropriate treatment, surgical errors or failure to inform patients of possible risks. The act or mistake has to be proven through review of medical records by an expert professional team. Such teams are set up by the specific hospital management or the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria if the case is reported to the council. It cannot be insinuated because a patient said so, but must be accurately proven with facts and real-time evidence. And the harm has to be documented with assurance that such harm could not have occurred other than through the medical mistreatment.
How widespread is it in Nigeria?
As elsewhere in the world, it is common in Nigeria. Around one in every 10 patients worldwide is harmed in healthcare. In low- to middle-income countries, as many as 4 in 100 people die from unsafe care. Specific figures are hard to come by in Nigeria.
However, in Nigeria, a large proportion of medical errors are unreported or even unknown to patients. I speak from my experience as a doctor. Only those that result in severe complications and death are known and reported. Therefore, only a few cases come to the public’s attention. Incidentally, some patients sometimes perceive negligence when in fact there has been no negligence. A large proportion of such cases are reported due to the ignorance of our populace on medical matters. Therefore, only a few true cases come to the public’s attention.
What are the common examples of medical negligence in Nigeria?
Some examples of medical negligence that have been reported in Nigeria include wrong prescriptions and surgical errors like wrongly tying the ureters (tubes that pass urine from the kidney to the bladder to excrete waste products). Others are inability to control bleeding during surgery and forgetting surgical instruments inside the bodies of patients. Recently, the Kano State Hospitals Management Board confirmed that surgical scissors were mistakenly left inside a patient’s body during surgery. It admitted negligence in this case.
Other types of negligence are substandard monitoring of patients and not promptly attending to patients during emergencies. Wrong diagnosis is another one. For example, a patient with cancer being diagnosed as not having cancer.
However, for medical negligence to be recognised by the law and professional codes, it needs to be proven that a doctor breached a duty of care, that the breach resulted in an injury, and that the patient suffered damage.
It is worthy of note that some patients sometimes encourage negligence, for example by refusing appropriate treatment. An example is when a patient with severe anaemia refuses blood transfusion for religious reasons. If such a patient dies without being transfused, the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria would consider such a medical practitioner as being negligent. The council regulates the practice of medicine, dentistry and alternative medicine in Nigeria.
What are the factors responsible for medical negligence in Nigeria?
Some factors that lead to medical negligence in Nigeria include:
human resources – shortage of healthcare providers, leading to exhaustion and increased risk of errors
inadequate infrastructure – poorly equipped health facilities, inadequate medical facilities and lack of essential medicines
leadership and weak health governance of many of the health facilities
poor service delivery, due mainly to limited opportunities for continuous physician training in line with global standards.
What are the options for redress by patients or their family members?
Some may decide not to take action, recognising that in all aspects of life, mistakes do occur. In my experience in Nigeria, some families opt not to take further action and “leave everything to God”. They rationalise that no death occurs without God’s decision that such a death should take place.
However, in our increasingly westernised world, we have seen families deciding to take such matters to court or seeking redress from the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. Some may decide with the doctors to settle the matter out of court. In my experience, only a few succeed in court because an enormous amount of evidence is required to prove cases of negligence. The council is quite active on such matters and often provides a prompt response based on technical investigations.
What should be done to prevent negligence?
The capacity of the regulatory agencies (like the Medical and Dental Council) to enforce standards can be strengthened. This can be through regular exposure to global standards. And healthcare infrastructure can be improved by providing better facilities.
Other approaches include promoting a culture of safety among practitioners, encouraging continued learning, skills building and certification of health practitioners, and promoting patients’ education. There are abundant sources of information that patients can seek before accepting medical treatments recommended by their practitioners.
Friday Okonofua does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
