Medical practitioners should stay on the right side of their professional oath
With the ongoing strike by resident doctors and allied health professionals at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan since May 1 this year, it is another season for harvesting cheap deaths in our country. The union, among other things, is demanding better conditions of service. But at a time critical stakeholders are seeking ways to end the impasse, the doors of several other teaching hospitals across the country are also being closed to patients many of whom are now dying by the day. Beyond the death toll, the action has also taken its toll on medical students training programme and related activities.
The president, Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), UCH branch, Dr . Lukman Ogunjinmi, gave this explanation for the strike: “ We are against casualisation. We want skipping to be implemented. The federal government, in a circular, said a particular grade level should be skipped by all health workers. It has been done for all other health workers while some centres have started implementing it for doctors. Here in UCH, it has not been done. Some other teaching hospitals are protesting poor infrastructure, inadequate manpower, poor welfare, poor working environment, unnecessary hike in the amount spent by patients for simple procedures and operations and haphazard residency training programme.”
These no doubt are serious issues and we sympathise with the doctors who have consistently drawn attention to their plight. Highlighting the crisis of the health sector in Nigeria today, Chairman of the UCH Medical Advisory Committee, Dr. Adefemi Afolabi, said the absence of a health minister has become a serious impediment. “The federal government needs to bail out some hospitals that have no money to pay what the doctors are asking for. Government is the father of everybody and it needs to interfere. Right now, the government has not settled down. We do not have a health minister and from what we know, the Director-General of the Budget Office has retired. Until those structures are put in place, the government has to interfere,” said Atoyebi.
While we agree with Atoyebi on the need for President Muhammadu Buhari to quickly put together his team for critical sectors, including health, it is sad that as it was in the past, the current stalemate between the doctors and the authorities simply leaves ordinary Nigerians to suffer. It would also appear that the doctors have no incentives to return to work armed with the knowledge that their salaries will be paid whether they work or not. In addition, there are reports that many of them continue to divert patients to private hospitals, where they have their practices, to get treated at exorbitant fees.
Whatever may be their grievances, the principal objective of medical and dental practitioners is the promotion of the health of patients. Therefore, medical and dental personnel are enjoined to be concerned for the common good and accord full respect to the human dignity of individuals. While it is not wrong for them to put pressure to bear on the government, this must not be done in a way that contravenes their professional oath. That is the only way to explain what is happening at the teaching hospitals today where patients are practically left to die.
We therefore call on the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) members to call off this strike in the interest of the general public. Grievances should be aired and demands made in ways that do not put the sector and general population at severe risk. This current strike, like the ones before it, is antithetical to the interest of Nigerians.
