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The Nigerian government and the Nigerian Medical Association have been asked to, as a matter of urgency, reach a resolution on the issues that led to the association’s strike in order to tackle the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.
In the seeming daggers-drawn situation between the Federal Government and Doctors over the suspension of residency training programmes in all Teaching Hospitals across the country, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Chris Ngige, on Tuesday, said that both the Federal Government and the doctors were to blamed over the situation.
The Senator, who is representing Anambra Central Senatorial Zone of Anambra State, said that the government’s action may have been targeted at effecting a “no work no pay” strategy on the doctors, but emphasised that the government may be “using a sledgehammer to kill a fly” by the suspension and the doctors.
He also said that the the doctors were not helping matters with the ongoing strike, knowing the essential role they could play in the control of a globally declared emergency disease outbreak, the Ebola Virus Disease.
As expected, the over six weeks strike has continued to affect medical care that sick persons get.
At the Teaching Hospital at Amaku Awka in Anambra State, the effect of the industrial action was very evident. Surgical wards are almost left empty, those who were sick had definitely sought help elsewhere since there were no doctors to treat them.
At the Chest Clinic Department, few patients were seated but no doctor was attending to them. Just few nurses were seen at the almost deserted hospital.
Amidst the strike, the Federal and State governments are trying to contain the Ebola Virus outbreak, but the needed manpower is not very available.
The Chief Medical Director of Anambra State Teaching Hospital, who was on inspection of the isolation camp created by the hospital in case of any Ebola Virus Disease emergency, maintained that the resident doctors, who had been sacked, do the bulk of the work in the hospitals and that the Federal Government had been supportive of them and therefore should not destroy the structure they had put in so much to build.
The Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, had insisted that over 90 per cent of the terms of agreement between the Federal Government and the Nigerian Medical Association had been met as their July salaries, in spite of the strike, were paid alongside allowances such as duty allowance, hazard allowance and teaching allowance.
Despite these efforts to lure the doctors back to work, nothing came out of it and the suspension of the residency programme has further deepened the impasse.
While some doctors say the Federal Government’s pronouncement of the residency suspension was one made in a fit of rage which is highly irrational, others still maintain that even with the strike, they have not been idle as they are following up on events and making contingency arrangements to contain any possible spread of the Ebola Virus Disease.
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