By Sola Ogundipe

The Joint Health Sector Union, JOHESU, and Assembly of Healthcare Professional Association, AHPA, has rejected what they described as “the  very biased and one-sided Yayale Ahmed Presidential Committee of Experts on Professional Relationships in the Public Health Sector, YAPCEPRPH in both public and professional interests.”

Stating this position in a jontly signed letter to President Muhammadu Buhari,  JOHESU/AHPA said: “From all intents and purposes, the report only seeks to further marginalise our members and compromises the future of generations of our members who will be permanently made sub-servient to their contemporaries in medicine.

In the letter HQ/JOHESU/ADM/VOL.III/582 dated 25th July, 2018, JOHESU and AHPA said they carried out a joint review of the  Yayale Ahmed report submitted to former President Goodluck Jonathan in December 2014 at Aso Rock, Villa, Abuja.

“Our findings confirm our fears that as usual, the Secretariat of the Committee was infiltrated by the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, through the instrument of its privileged members in high places in government. Nothing gives insight to this better than the phraseologies which perennially referred to doctors as ‘Leaders of the Health Team’ while other health professionals were favouritely dubbed ‘Allied Health Professionals,’ remains an incontrovertible proof of this position.”

In the letter,   JOHESU and AHPA said after they carried out  a very critical evaluation of the report, they decided to continue to dissociate their respective organisations from the less than credible posturing of the committee report.

“We strongly demand this report which is not in tune with national development and interest, be immediately withdrawn for public good and the future of the health sector as it is certainly not a positive reference point in the quest for international best practices.”

The letter raised series of issues including  establishment of the Office of Chief Medical Adviser to the President.

It read in part: “All the health professional associations apart from Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, and the trade unions in the health sector which collectively make up 95 per cent of the health workforce, have repeatedly rejected the need for a Surgeon-General in Nigeria or its introduction in any guise.

“For the umpteenth time, we restate with necessary emphasis that  a country whose public sector wage profile had increased by a whopping 100 per cent from N890 billion to N1.83 trillion in a five-year period between 2009 and 2014, should not be contemplating setting up fresh bureaucracies especially when it is unnecessary to satisfy ego trips.

“Mr. President Sir, we respectfully submit again that the establishment of any new bureaucracy in health amounts to an unnecessary duplication and waste of public funds, since it adds no extra value,” the letter noted.