The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has raised concerns over the loss of lives due to the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and violent attacks on its members while on duty.
In a press statement dated February 5, 2026, the association noted that hospitals must not become killing fields, further condemning an assault on its members at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo, in Ondo State, on the same date.
It also reported the death of a medical doctor, Salome Oboyi, a senior registrar in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Bingham University Teaching Hospital (BHUTH), Jos, Plateau State, after she was infected while operating on a Lassa fever patient.
According to the reports, a doctor was physically attacked in the line of duty by a group of individuals alleged to be relatives of a surgical patient.
“This act of violence against Adeniyi A., a senior registrar in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Federal Medical Centre, Owo, while he was discharging his Hippocratic duties, is reprehensible, barbaric, and a direct assault on the medical profession and the Nigerian healthcare system,” NARD stated.
“It is even more disturbing that this occurred within a hospital environment, a place meant to preserve life, safety, and dignity,” the association added.
NARD noted that Oboyi’s death is just one among many, as several similar incidents have occurred across the country involving doctors who died in the line of duty while attending to critical cases.
In the statement, the association said, “Salome’s death is not an accident. It is not fate. It is the predictable consequence of a healthcare system that routinely exposes its frontline workers to danger and then mourns them quietly.”
“Managing Lassa fever is a high-risk assignment, often carried out in resource-constrained settings with inadequate protective equipment, weak institutional safeguards, and little assurance of support if the worst happens.
Doctors go in anyway, driven by duty, compassion, and oath. They should not have to pay with their lives,” NARD added.
Shocking Statistics
The death of doctors in the line of duty due to shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) is not new. About 20 doctors reportedly died within one week during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to BBC reports.
It will also be recalled that Stella Ameyo, a medical consultant, died in August 2014 at the age of 57 while attending to a Liberian patient, Patrick Sawyer, who had contracted the Ebola virus at First Consultant Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, according to the BBC.
Reports indicate that Stella raised the alarm about the virus shortly after Sawyer arrived in the country.
Her bravery helped curb the spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria that year, as the country recorded minimal incidence and mortality in what could have become a full-blown epidemic, experts note.
