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. 

 

The warning from NMA came even as the 38th National Council on Health, the highest decision-making body on health in the country, officially begins in Sokoto State today. Meanwhile, National Mirror learnt yesterday that health workers under the auspices of Joint Health Sector Unions, JOHESU, and Assembly of Health Care Professionals, AHPA, have suspended their planned strike. A source in JOHESU told our correspondent yesterday that the suspension was arrived at by the groups as a mark of honour to Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, James Ocholi, who died in a road mishap on Sunday.