Resident Doctors’ strike and need for  government to be more responsive

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) two weeks ago through its National President, Dr Emeka Orji declared an indefinite strike.

Dr Orji said the decision was made during the July National Executive Council meeting in Lagos.

At the core of the doctors demands according to media reports are recruitment of more medical doctors to replace those leaving the country in droves, the call to Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria to discontinue the downgrading of their membership certificate issued by the West African Postgraduate Medical and Surgical Colleges; the immediate payment of all salary arrears; the implementation of the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure; a new hazard allowance; and the domestication of the Medical Residency Training Act among others.

Speaking about their frustration, Dr Orji said, “Our members are saying that we have been on this since January on the same issues, and they are not going to continue to wait.

“The very important part of our demands is one-for-one replacement, and doctors are still leaving and the ones remaining are being overworked.

“Last week, a doctor died in Bayelsa State. Doctors are dying from being overworked, and we have been on this for a long time.”

Expectedly, two weeks after, the strike is already taking toll on our wobbling health sector worsening the already bad situation crippling hospital services while patients are practically abandoned to either die or seek for private medical care if they could afford the expensive bills.

A visit to some of the hospitals revealed total compliance with the strike as only a few Consultants and House Officers were rendering skeletal services to patients with serious complaints. For the doctors, it is either the federal government meets their stated demands or they are not returning to work.

Rather than persuading or entering into negotiations with the striking doctors, the federal government in its usual manner, playing the boss ordered the stoppage of the payment of the salaries of the doctors explaining that it invoked the policy to ensure that members of the association are not paid during the period of the strike, and to deter other health workers.

At the moment, the country is said to have less than 25,000 registered practising doctors to take care of over 200m population. The ratio of Doctor to patients according to World Health Organization (WHO) is 1 to 600, but as far back as 2021 the ratio of Doctor to patients is 1 to 2500 in Nigeria. Between 2008 and 2021, over 36,000 doctors were said to have left the shores of Nigeria while between 2021 and 2022 alone, over 60,000 Nigerian nurses left the country in search of greener pastures.

This migration with its serious negative impacts on our health care system has always been linked to poor remuneration, poor working conditions, lack of medical facilities and above all, insensitivity from the government.

Under the immediate past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) spent almost a year twice when they embarked on strike to call for proper funding of the universities and implementation of agreements the federal government signed with it since 2009.

A country treating its highly essential manpower this shabbily can never make any meaningful progress and development.

There is no denying the fact that our health care sector needs all the attention it can grab so that Nigerians wouldn’t die unnecessary death again. A visit to many of our government owned health facilities will confirm that there is need to declare state of emergency in this sector to fix the rot.

We all know that there is no alternative to sound health and that is why issues that are germaine to providing qualitative health care to Nigerians as being championed by the residents doctors should be promptly attended to.

It is the belief of many Nigerians that without declaring State of emergency in the health sector and removing all the impediments towards achieving affordable qualitative health care, President Tinubu won’t be making any meaningful difference with his mission to renew hope of residents of the country.

It is the opinion out there that once our medical facilities are in top notch state and our health workers are reasonably remunerated, the medical tourism which takes billions of naira away from the country yearly will be reasonably curtailed while life expectancy which is less than 50 years in the country as we speak will move up too.

It is against this background that people expect President Bola Tinubu to swiftly move in and ensure that this strike which would have ostensibly led to death of many Nigerians that are sometimes too poor to afford bills of seeking private medical care never last a day any longer.