There is this practice of demanding police referral report from any patient with physical injury sustained as result of domestic accident, road accident, weapons, etc. By this practice, the medical personnel in both public and private hospitals and clinics will not even lay their hands or administer first aid on patients, however fatal their injury might be, until they get a report/referral from the police.
Many victims have suffered and still suffer avoidable pains and sometimes even lost of lives before obtaining such a permit from the police. I believe every single one of us has been either directly or indirectly a victim or at least a witness to this. This practice is as obnoxious as it is anti-life.
What makes the situation even more worrisome is the fact that the practice is not supported by any law. THERE IS NO LAW stipulating that patients with physical injuries should not be treated without police referral. Such a law is simply NON-EXISTENT. The closest to this practice in our laws is the provision of Section 4 subsection 2 of the Robbery and Firearms Act which provides that:
"It shall be the duty of any hospital or clinic that admits, treats or administers any drug to any person suspected of having bullet wounds to immediately report the matter to the police"
It is possibly the above provision that is used by the police, hospitals and clinics as the impetus for this obnoxious practice. However, a glance at this law shows:
1. That the law only deals with persons having bullet wounds, not accident victims.
2. That even in the case of a person having bullet wounds, report shall made after admission, treatment or adminstration of drug has started.
3. The law only mandates the hospital or clinic to report. It did not empower the police to issue any referral letter nor does it empower the hospital or clinic to demand such a letter from the patient or his relatives.
In the final analysis, this practice is illegal. It has caused suffering and deaths of patients with physical injuries. It is inhumane, insensitive and anti-life.
It is in view of the foregoing that we call on hospitals and clinics to stop insisting on the production of referral letter or permit from the police before they attend to patients with physical injuries. We also call on the police to stop intimidating hospitals and clinics for not obtaining such an illegal permit.
Activista NY
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