Nigerian Doctors Vow To Commence Nationwide Strike From Wednesday

The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has said it has not and has no plans to call off it proposed nationwide strike starting from Wednesday. The association said this on Tuesday in a statement by its president, Osahon Enabulele.

“It has been brought to our attention that there is news making the rounds that the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has called off the proposed strike action for Wednesday 18th December, 2013,”
Mr. Enabulele said. “We wish to inform our members and members of the public to disregard any such information and to proceed with the planned action for the withdrawal of service from Wednesday 18th December, 2013 until the EDM empowered National Executive Council (NEC) decides otherwise”.
Meanwhile, Public Relations Officer of the Lagos state chapter of the association, Peter Ogunnubi, in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES stated the following as reasons why every doctor is downing tools from Wednesday.
The poor and decayed infrastructure in the health system need uplifting as this has lead to many doctors leaving this country because of poor conditions of service.
Federal government is paying lip service to the health system as less than 5 per cent as against 15 per cent World Health Organization standard is being budgeted for health sector annually.
Need to improve funding of residency training as a time will come that there will be paucity of ‘specialist’ in the country if this is not checked.
Government has allowed certain policies in the running of health care system which if not checked will lead to total collapse and paralysis of the system.
Some of these include: Selective skipping of paramedics from level 10 to 12 to the detriment of doctors as such skipping should have been made to be across board.
‘Consultancy’ appelage with full financial benefits which has been granted to some paramedics and with which they are now arm twisting the government through the “kangaroo industrial court injunction” they got.
Should this continue, it will bring about confusion with regards to who and who is in charge of patients’ management.
The Federal Government have been playing ‘hide and seek’ with doctors and has not shown full commitment in resolving this matter.
The last committee set up to harmonize the difference was headed by Yayale Ahmed, but he resigned afterwards citing frustration and lack of support from the Federal Government.
Mr. Ogunnubi, however, stated that the strike shall be fully complied with by all doctors in public hospitals including the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in all the 36 states of the federation and Abuja.


Premium Times