Strike: Grief as doctors abandon patients

By Vincent Ujumadu

AWKA—THE on-going strike by members of National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, is causing pains to patients at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, NAUTH, Nnewi, as striking doctors have abandoned them.

At the hospital, yesterday, only the consultants were at their duty posts and were not enough to attend to patients who came for treatment.

Some of the patients, who could not afford to go to private hospitals for treatment, opted to go home instead of paying for bed spaces when they were not receiving treatment.

Doctors’ demands

The doctors are demanding, among others, increase in their salaries, improvement of infrastructure in the country’s hospitals so as to update the facilities to ensure quality healthcare delivery and re-introduction of overseas medical training for their members which was suspended several years ago.

They had earlier given the Federal Government 21-day ultimatum which expired in March.

Chairman of the strike monitoring committee at NAUTH, Dr. Uzoma Mbaeri, said members of NARD began the strike after receiving a signal from the national body of the association and that the doctors would not even carry out skeletal services of any kind and would not call off the strike until their demands were met.

He said the strike became inevitable as a result of non-compliance of the Federal Government to pay the doctors agreed consolidated medical salary scheme as well as arrears which were to begin in January this year.
Mbaeri  said the association would have gone on strike last year, but postponed it because of the ill-health of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and to see whether government would fulfill its own side of the agreement.

Broken promises

He recalled that the Federal Government had earlier informed the association that the new salary scheme had already been built into the budget and that payment would begin during the implementation of the budget, only for government to renege on the promise.

He said:  “We need modern medical equipment in all the hospitals. People are dying everyday, not because of lack of expertise, but because we don’t have the necessary equipment to sort out the patients.

“Our politicians fly abroad to have quality medical treatment because they can afford it. What about the ordinary man in the street?  Let them get the hospitals well equipped.”

He also observed that NARD members were entitled to one year medical training abroad to update themselves for better services and wondered why the Federal Government scraped the scheme, with its negative consequences.

He added that the association had been patient enough, having issued several warnings before taking the final decision to embark on the strike.