MYSTERY DOC IN T&T

Secretary of the Medical Board of Trinidad and Tobago Dr Seetharaman Hariharan said yesterday he did not know who was the doctor at the heart of the controversial surgery in which cocaine pellets were removed from a patient’s stomach and handed back to him.
Speaking to the Express via telephone, Hariharan said the board was aware of the public interest in the matter.
“But we cannot investigate a doctor without knowing who is the doctor. And this is why we are going to write to the police and the hospital (St Augustine Private Hospital) to get more information and then we would take it from there.”
He said a doctor had to inform the police about any medical procedure which showed a connection to criminal activity.
“A doctor could not hide under the refuge of a breach of confidentiality,” Hariharan stated.
Hariharan’s defence of the Medical Board came one day after Attorney General Anand Ramlogan criticised the Medical Board for its silence on the issue.
The matter has sparked public outrage following acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams’s announcement that there is no evidence to charge the doctor or patient.
Williams said this advice was tendered by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Kathy Ann Waterman-Latchoo.
Hariharan said the board normally would only take action against a doctor if there is a written complaint, or if there is an indictment or a conviction by the court.
“That constitutes infamous conduct (misconduct),” Hariharan said.
He said in this case there had been none of these things.
He said on the last occasion when there was a case attracting national attention—the case of baby Simeon Cottle—the Attorney General sent the board the complaint and named the doctor and that was why the council (the executive body of the Medical Board) was currently investigating that issue.
But while the Medical Board is in the dark, Fixin T&T yesterday issued a release naming the doctor involved in the “cocaine surgery”.
Said Hariharan: “In this particular instance (of the cocaine surgery), although the matter has been in the newspapers, we have never received anything (in writing). I don’t even know who is the doctor. So what we are doing, because it has attracted so much public attention, we are now exchanging views amongst council members. There are varying opinions among us and we may have to call for an extraordinary meeting.
“At this point, we can only write to the hospital, based on the reports in the media, asking for the information and then we would have to deliberate and determine if we can take action at all. Unless we get a clear complaint against one particular doctor, we cannot just go and set up a tribunal to investigate,” he said, adding that the council could only do what it was so empowered to do, under the Medical Board Act.
Hariharan said if the board decides a formal investigation is warranted, it would set up a tribunal to determine whether there was misconduct and, based on the findings, it would reprimand the doctor, suspend his medical licence or revoke his licence, depending on the gravity of the offence.
“The Act does not allow us to go on the basis of hearsay or media reports… But we are not (just) sitting and watching. We are trying to see how best we can approach this issue…because the Attorney General has alluded to this matter.”
He said according to the Medical Board Act, it can initiate an investigation on a complaint of four members of the council. But this too requires a knowledge of who the doctor is.
“If the Attorney General or anybody had given us the practitioner’s name and a complaint of misconduct…,” he said.
Hariharan noted that according to the code of ethics, whenever there is a “legal scenario”, the doctor must inform the police.
He said it was not a “legal requirement”.
He said the exceptions to the doctor/patient confidentiality rule included matters relating to the courts and matters involving the greater common good.
“I understand that this is a case of public interest…but we have to be extremely objective before saying that this particular doctor indeed was guilty of misconduct. Because there are so many implications. According to the Medical Board Act, if somebody does something to save someone’s life, without any profit motive, we can’t do anything about that,” Hariharan stated.
“This doctor may have a defence by saying that there was a threat to his life if he informed the police,” Hariharan added, stressing that he was merely “speculating”.
In response to a question, he said the code of ethics was silent on the issue of the possible threat to a doctor’s life.
Told that the UK Medical Protection Agency had taken a position on this case of the cocaine surgery, stating that the law was clear on what the doctor ought to have done, without knowing the name of the doctor, Hariharan said in the UK if a doctor commits a traffic offence the ticket automatically goes to the UK Medical Council.
Citing a case where a doctor in the UK, who failed to pay the television tax, was threatened with the loss of his licence, Hariharan said: “They (the British body) have that kind of statutory power.”
In its release, Fixin T&T asked, among other things, the name of the patient; whether the patient was related to any senior Government official; what was the medical bill; who comprised the medical team; and whether members of the team or the patient were interviewed by the police.(Trinidad Express Newspaper)