The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has said that about 48 doctors were reported to have been displaced and badly affected by the flood which occured in Maiduguri and in some parts of Jere Council Area of Borno State.
The displaced physcians were said to be magnanimous to the extent of rendering humanitarian services within the 36 camps recreated for the internally-displaced people (IDPs) from the sudden flood.
Yakub Mohammed, Chairman of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) stated this during the celebration of the World Physicians Day held in Maiduguri.
Mohammed said that the NMA Executive did their best in ensuring that they visited the affected doctors who fled their homes away from the flood waters and empathised with follow internally displaced persons, individually
“As a matter of fact, we have bylaws which we invoked to give them all the support they needed to make them fall in line with our standards of provision of welfare for our members.
”Incidentally most of them who found themselves attending to patients in IDP camps were equally involved in the provision of services to the entire populace which were affected by the sudden surge of water from Alau dam.
“This meant we had to activate our humanity support system for other flood affected residents too to be involved in instant outreach services to hundreds of residents in various camps that needed medical care.
Read also: Borno flood: Several LGAs yet to reconnect city centre, as rice farmers still in distress
“We even made sure that hot meals were cooked for the idps numbering over 400 for the first one week of the flood. And that went a long way to help people out of despair”, the Chairman said.
The Chairman noted that the annual physician week was set aside by the United Nations to celebrate doctors and understand their contemporary challenges even as they proffer solutions to some of them.
Speaking on the peculiar challenges affecting his members, Mohhamed regretted that brain drain is one glaring problem which occurs as a result of the lingering disparity between practitioners in the Country and others outside who work in much more conducive environments.
“Brain drain is our major problem in this part of the country. We have just about 800 doctors providing services to people in the entire state and you know what that means. It puts a stress on individual doctors who do the jobs of many.
”This is what results into burn out syndrome which in most circumstances is a very strong factor responsible for the state government loosing many doctors to other states and the federal with more personnel and remuneration.
“Health care professionals should be paid across board because health is not on the exclusive list in terms of remuneration. So in response to your question, we would be glad if the federal government can take over the payments of remuneration of doctors as they have done in the judiciary to ensure sanity and stability.
”The State govt is loosing lots of medical doctors yearly and this is worrisome to us because one doctor is left to cater for hundreds of patients in a day and you know what that means to the mental state of that practitioner. That is the only way to mitigate the problem”, he noted.
On arrears for his colleagues, Mohammed said that the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) was revised and implemented from January this year but they were yet to see the corresponding response to this directive on their pay slips.
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