A photo taken on October 21, 2014 shows the ward where the first reported case of the Ebola virus in Nigeria was brought by Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who contaminated nurses and health workers at First Consultants Hospital in Obalende, Lagos. Nigeria was declared Ebola-free on October 20 in a “spectacular success” in the battle to contain the spread of a virus which is devastating Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia where more than 4,500 people have died. The World Health Organization said Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country where eight deaths had sparked fears of a rapid spread through its teeming cities — had shown the world “that Ebola can be contained”. AFP PHOTO
As ongoing strike by health workers across the country bites harder, leaders of the workers in Asaba, yesterday accused the management of Federal Medical Centre, FMC, of using quacks to service patients.
They claimed that the management had employed and deployed unqualified hands to render health services which they were not trained or licensed to do.
The representatives of the workers, on the aegis of Joint Health Sector Union, JOHESU, raised the alarm in a statement after an emergency meeting to appraise the strike.
In the statement by the chairman of JOHESU, Tony Asiodu, the workers advised the public to be careful and not to play with their health.
He said: “The management has thrown away tenets of professionalism and ethics of professional conducts in a bid to create a posture that the hospital is providing services, when in actual sense they are rendering unhealthy and quack services, which poses a great threat to Delta State citizens and members of the public at large.
“All the qualified professional, whose job they are trying to do, are on strike.”
He said non-qualified and non-licensed casual staff were employed to carry out laboratory and nursing services.
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