Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, yesterday blamed industrial disharmony and other crises in the nation’s health sector on judiciary, health ministry, hospitals’ managements, and health workers in the country. The doctors specifically identified interpretations of health-related laws by judges in the country, alleged weaknesses of past and present governments to tackle issues headlong and deliberate attempts by non-doctors to hijack their roles in hospitals as fundamental reasons crises in the sector have worsened and lingered. The group repeatedly affirmed its leadership of the nation’s health sector, including all hospitals, and vowed never to concede it to any health worker other than doctors. The NMA urged Nigerians to prevail on the federal and other tiers of government to ensure all employees work according to their rules of engagement and discipline. The group however warned that the sector could witness “disaster and collapse” if the alleged trends were not addressed. A statement signed by president and General-Secretary of the group, Kayode Obembe and Adewunmi Alayaki respectively, called on the National Assembly to urgently hold a joint session to probe alleged anomalies in the sector. It also seeks the implementation of report of the Yayale Ahmed-led Presidential Committee on Harmony in the sector.
The association lamented that non-medical practitioners and doctors, who once worked in health facilities to save patients, now live like rats in hospitals. Condemning judicial pronouncement which favoured non-doctors, the association said: “The Nigerian Medical Association is highly appalled by the state of affairs in the healthcare delivery system which has been reinforced by the recent ruling of National Industrial Court. An ill-informed ruling as a result of a poor understanding of the meaning of medicine, its ramifications and appendages, the role and rights of practitioners of medicine and their relationship with allied healthcare professionals for the purpose of maintaining members of the public in a state of health.” Consequent upon hatred caused by crises in the sector, the doctors argued that “deep-rooted enmity of a lifetime and for future generations has been created among a group of people who work and live together as a team because of these interpretations that pacified only the crying baby without asking for the reason for the lamentation.” The group said it was furious over alleged attempts by non-doctors to usurp their functions through various tactics including being “aided by the acquiescence or collusion of some persons entrusted with power and authority to perform certain roles in the system, to foist a state of frozen conflict on the healthcare delivery system of Nigeria to the detriment of the public.”
It added that health workers have used a combination of “contrived” misapplication of government policy and establishment circulars and misused legislations to cause unimaginable divisions, segmentation, indiscipline and other vices in the healthcare system with attendant but avoidable injuries and deaths to unsuspecting members of the public.
Credit: NationalMirror
