Relations relocate loved ones from hospitals as doctors begin indefinite strike

Medical doctors at Federal hospitals in Oyo State yesterday stayed away from their duty posts in line with the Nigerian Medical Association(NMA) directive to embark on an indefinite strike from Tuesday, July 1st.

The NMA is demanding reservation of the position of chief medical director to only medical doctors, appointment of surgeon general of the federation, passage of National Health Bill as well as security for doctors.

Other demands include increase in duty, hazard and specialist allowances, as well as budget for residency training programme. They are also calling for the reintegration of their members into the IPPIS platform, and reserving the title of consultants for only medical doctors, among others.

At the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, most patients yesterday were not attended to by the striking doctors. With the exception of the Accident and Emergency Section in the hospital, other sections were without doctors to attend to patients.

The development has started taking its toll on healthcare of Nigerians as most in-patients were moved out of the government hospitals to private hospitals.

Some patients who spoke to BusinessDay said they would seek medical attention elsewhere while some expressed fear that the effect would be too much for the patients to bear but called on the government to resolve the grey areas with the doctors.

However, Adefolarin Malomo, a professor and the chairman, NMA, Oyo State, said the association had been pressed most painfully to resume the  suspended strike.

According to him, “Due to the unsuccessful means to make the government see reason, we have to resort to strike as the last resort.” The government has however remained quiet on policies that have driven two regulatory bodies to exchange words on the pages of newspapers.

Addressing journalists at UCH, Malomo, who was flanked by Franklin Anor, a medical doctor  and the chairman of the National Association of Resident Doctors in UCH, and other executive members of the medical Association, stated that the “government is asking those who have never been required to and who have not published any articles in learned journals to direct professors in a tertiary institution; government has decided to cancel functional deputy directorship of clinical services, research and training while multiplying it for others; government has made other health workers skip salary scale steps while ‘skipping’ doctors in executing it”.

He noted that what Nigerians seem to be unaware of is that things are getting dreadfully worse in the hospitals, especially government-owned tertiary ones, as a consequence of all these and more, and one wonders if government is monitoring at all. The implications of this, he mentioned, was unsystematic approach to change.

On why the union decided to ignore a court order barring NMA from embarking on strike, he explained that since the government had failed to withdraw the letters sent to JOHESU members which was part of the order of the National Industrial Court, the union did not have any alternative than to begin the strike.

Remi Feyisipo