Residents of Yanshanu community in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State are living in shock and apprehension as seven more persons who has had surgical operations at Murna Hospital over the years have claimed that their kidneys are missing.
A self acclaimed medical doctor, Noah Kekere has been at the centre of a organ harvesting controversy after a patient who came to perform a surgery at his facility complained of a missing kidney.
He has been arrested by the police with the Plateau state chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), saying he’s not a medical doctor and thus not part of them.
7 people have also now claimed that their kidneys have been harvested by Mr Noah Kekere.
The Chairman, Yanshanu Community Development Association, Alhaji Jamilu Baba, told Saturday Tribune in an interview on Friday that anyone who may have had one form of surgical operation or the other at Kekere’s clinic in the past had been asked to go for tests to confirm the state of their kidneys.
Alhaji Baba revealed that not less than seven people, have been discovered to have one kidney each with the other missing, adding that other people were still in the process of going for scans based on the report before the community.
“It may interest you that those who went for scans are complaining of the same thing. At the moment, about seven have claimed that only one kidney was found in their bodies after scans. All of them had, at different times, had surgical operations performed on them by the so-called doctor at Murna Clinic,” he said.
“The hospital is called Murna Clinic owned by one man called Dr Noah Kekere, popularly known as Dr Yellow. He has been in this community for over 18 years. The people of this community trusted him and patronised him whenever they were not feeling well.
“But to our great surprise, we learned of his involvement in this unfortunate incident that he operated on a woman about seven years ago when she had an appendicitis. Unfortunately, after the operation, the woman was still complaining of stomach pain. Kekere has been managing her and collecting money from the family.
“After much complaining without any improvement, the husband told her wife to try Jos University Teaching Hospital, where it was discovered after a scan that she had one kidney; that the other one was missing.
“The report came to us and to the entire community as a shock. This man has betrayed the trust the community has in him. I cannot count the number of people in this community that this man has operated on. This incident has caused confusion in the community. Those he had operated on at one time or another are now jittery. We have been advising people that have been coming to us to go for tests at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) and other certified hospitals.
“We are having a community meeting on Saturday (today) to discuss this issue thoroughly and tell other people who have undergone one form of operation or the other there to go for scans.
“The matter has been reported to the DPO in charge of this area and he has transferred the case to the state police headquarters. According to police investigation, the man has confessed that he removed the kidney of that woman (Mrs Kehinde Kamaru), saying that it was the work of the devil. Because of the damage he has done to our community, we petitioned the state Commissioner of Police, asking him to conduct a thorough investigation.
“The community has been so nice to him, but unfortunately, this is how he rewarded us. He had been presenting himself as a qualified medical doctor to the people, but he is not. Police investigation revealed that he has a BSc and a Master’s degree in Economics. We were told that he went to a nursing school but abandoned his programme along the way. He has done a lot of damage to our people.”
He therefore therefore called on the police to look beyond the woman whose case exposed the fake doctor, even as he emphasised the need to get to the root of the matter to deter others engaging in such a dubious act.
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