A K20 'family-planning injection', an amputated arm and three years with hard labour: Lusaka's 'doctor HH' case, and the Makeni 'doctor' arrested the same month

In Zambia, health practitioners and health facilities are licensed by the Health Professions Council of Zambia, the HPCZ, the body to check before trusting anyone with a syringe. Two Lusaka cases reported in August 2023 show what happens in the gap between a licence and a nickname: one ended in an amputation and a prison sentence, the other in a death and an arrest.

According to the Zambian Observer, which credited Mwebantu, a 31-year-old mother from Chazanga township testified in January 2023 that around noon on 11 August 2022 a man she knew as 'doctor HH' injected her with what he sold as a three-month family-planning injection for K20. Her arm began to hurt and her breastfeeding infant developed diarrhoea and vomiting. After several visits to Kanyama clinic the arm burst open and she lost consciousness. She woke at the University Teaching Hospital, where it had been amputated. The 58-year-old accused pleaded not guilty to maliciously administering poison with intent to harm and suggested in cross-examination that she might have been drunk.

News Diggers reported on 15 August 2023 that Lusaka magistrate Chrispin Hampugani had sentenced the accused, businessman Shadreck Hang'andu (also spelled Shaderick Ng'andu and Shady Hang'andu), to three years' imprisonment with hard labour for causing grievous bodily harm, after finding the poison charge unproven. A week earlier Mwebantu reported that police working with the HPCZ had arrested Brian Musonda, 36, described as an illegal health practitioner of Congolese origin, at his residence in Makeni East, where he allegedly ran an unlicensed facility. A 37-year-old woman from George township with fibroids had died the previous month after he allegedly attempted to operate on her. HPCZ spokesman Terry Musonda said the council had been alerted that the suspect was practising without a licence; one patient was admitted at the facility, where medical equipment and supplies were found.

Neither man is reported to have used a forged degree. One needed a nickname, a neighbour's introduction and a K20 price; the other a house, some equipment and patients who did not ask for a licence. In Makeni the regulator acted only after a tip-off and a death; in Chazanga the reports mention no regulator, only police and the courts. The check that failed was the simplest: is this person on the HPCZ register, and is this a licensed facility.

For a student or family weighing medicine in Zambia, the lesson is practical. Confirm a practitioner and a facility with the regulator before paying, however small the fee, and treat a 'doctor' known only by a nickname and working from a home as a warning. The regulator that polices quacks will one day register you, so learn how its register works now.