BY CHIOMA OBINNA
The end to the protracted doctors’ strike in Lagos State may not be in sight as the four – week – old strike, on Friday, took a dramatic twist when their colleagues in the federal health institutions in the state threatened to begin a one- week warning solidarity strike by tomorrow.

Empty hospitals in

The solidarity strike is expected to convey to the Lagos State government the displeasure of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) over the lingering impasse between them and the doctors.

With the latest development, which would remove the only respite left for Lagosians seeking healthcare services in the state public sector, many more preventable deaths are likely to be recorded particularly from emergency and referral cases, if nothing urgent is done to resolve the face-off between the doctors and the state government.

Going by the decision of Federal doctors, only patients already on admission in Federal Government health institutions in the state, including Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Federal Medical Centre, Ebute-Metta and National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, would be attended to during the one -week solidarity strike. No new patient including emergency cases would be accepted.

Briefing journalists after an emergency general meeting of the state NMA, the Lagos State chairman of the association, Dr. Edamisan Temiye, alleged that the state government has failed to honour its agreement with the doctors that come January, 2011, it was going to implement the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) fully for members of the Guild, reinstate Dr. Olaifa, a victimised member, and review the heavy tax doctors pay to the state government.

Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State.

According to him, not only did the government refuse to implement the agreement, it also engaged in blackmail, threats and intimidation of the medical doctors in Lagos state.

Temiye expressed the hope that the gesture and with input from the general public the face – off will be resolved within the period of the warning strike.

His words, “We wish to state that we hold the Government of Lagos State responsible for the safety of the lives and property of all the doctors in Lagos State and their families in view of the campaign of calumny that has been directed against the doctors and claims of jumbo pay that we have been reading on the pages of newspapers and handbills circulated by the government.”

Many die daily
Life is no longer sacrosanct in government hospitals in Lagos State. Death, the final frontier, reigns supreme. The protracted medical doctors’ strike has continued to impart heavy toll on countless innocent patients. Many have died, many are dying, many more will die.

Everyone is affected. No one is spared. Doctors, by virtue of their training, are expected to save lives, have declined to do so while government, which primary responsibility it is to protect the citizens, cannot call the doctors to order.

As things are, patients are on their own and there is no end in sight to the strike.

Daily reports of preventable death in all 24 health facilities across the state have become the order. Unconfirmed reports say since the beginning of the four-week-old strike, two or more deaths are recorded daily in those health facilities. The scores of deaths are exclusive of unreported ones in the churches and traditional healing homes which patients patronise in the quest for medicare.

Victims relatives’ accounts

For Bola Badejo, who lost his wife barely eight days after delivering their first child in a taxi, right at the centre of a bus stop in the city, Lagos doctors have lost their dignity as professionals. “I now see them as killers and business men who are only interested in their own pockets. As far as I am concerned, their medical Oath no longer counts in Lagos State.

“It happened like a dream, I had no choice but to tell you, the doctors and the state government should be hold responsible for the death of my wife and many other people who have lost their lives in the cause of this strike.”

Badejo’s wife was said to have been rushed to one of the newly built maternal and child centres at Ifaiko Ijaiye, where she registered when she fell into labour. Unfortunately, they were told that doctors and nurses were on strike that fateful afternoon.

“On our way to a nearby private hospital, my wife gave birth to our child but died few days after the naming,” Badejo lamented.

Along with losing his wife, the baby died too. “It is a double tragedy,” he said.

Badejo is not alone, like Mrs. Agatha Egere, who lost his husband two weeks ago, an incident she said doctors’ strike was the cause. Agatha said the delay in getting timely treatment for his husband, who had pneumonia, had cost him his life, despite efforts to give him the best treatment they could offer.

“We rushed him to Isolo General Hospital but on getting there, the doctors were still on strike. He died on the way home since we cannot afford to pay the huge medical bills his ailment can cost us in a private hospital,” she lamented.

As the impact of the strike continues to bite harder, investigation has revealed that many patients have resorted to patronising herbal medicine dealers and spiritual homes (church), which, activities are less expensive, but hardly subjected to regulations.

However, these few Lagosians are not the only ones counting their losses from the Lagos doctors’ strike.

Season of deaths

In the last four weeks, it has become a season of deaths in all the state-owned hospitals. A visit to the hospitals showed empty casualty departments. The beehive of activities in the hospitals is no more. There were no cases waiting at the outpatient wards. Even the teaching hospitals and their satellites have become ghost towns. To the informed, certainly something was amiss. But the mystery is not far-fetched.

Doctors who claimed to be leaders of the medical team have turned strike as a formidable weapon whenever there was a misunderstanding between them and the government. The situation today is that doctors in Lagos are refusing to save lives. This scenario is the same in all state-owned hospitals in Lagos. Hapless patients have had to cope with a semblance of health care services currently being offered by medical doctors in private. Late last year, the doctors spent 14 weeks at home, only to suspend it and quietly collected their salary without considering the lives already lost in the cause of the strike.

More worrisome is the fact that these doctors were paid for those three and half months they did not work with tax payers money and nobody saw anything wrong with that. What a system! Both the government and doctors never bothered about the feelings of those families that lost their loved ones in the cause of the strike. They were never compensated and more are about to lose their lives. Will the government compensate them this time?

Dr Williams Oyebode, Chairman, Medical Guild, Lagos State.

They all quietly signed an agreement and everybody pretended as though nothing happened. As if that was not enough, four weeks ago, the doctors embarked on another industrial action claiming that the state government reneged on the agreement.

Playing politics with patients

But the question that remained unanswered is, in all of these, where is the patient?

Neither the government nor the doctors is considering the plight of the patients in this case. Today, observers have concluded that both the doctors and government are playing politics with the lives of patients. If only any of them had the interest of the patient at heart, either the government would have succumbed to paying the almighty Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) or the doctors would have accepted the 90 percent the state government has offered.

Unfortunately, both parties have remained stuck to their positions and Lagosians have continued to lose their lives for what they knew nothing about. The government and the doctors have resorted to trading blames.

However, with thousands of patients unable to access medical care and more disturbingly, the rising death tolls, despondency and gloom mildly describe the precarious situation when one visits any of the Lagos hospitals in the last four weeks.

Vanguard gathered authoritatively that countless number of patients, including children have died, most of them emergency cases.

When the state government approved the latest salary, in which a consultant would earn more than N700,015.50 per month, which is about N50,000.00 less than what the Federal Government approved, most Lagosians heaved a sigh of relief but rather than subside, restiveness in the sector has escalated unfortunately.

Strikes by doctors this year alone have claimed the lives of thousands of patients and placed massive burden on ancillary services, such as churches, mosques, traditional birth homes and even the domestic home, which have become emergency dispensaries. While the Lagos doctors’ strike lasts, the death toll of patients from treatable causes had been on the rise.

Deaths recorded in the city of Lagos alone in the last one month are believed to have more than doubled.

Salary structure
In 2007, Lagos State government came out with a salary structure for medical doctors that comprised the following for a Grade Level 10 officer: Monthly Basic Salary, Rent subsidy, Transport allowance, meal subsidy, Utility Allowance, LASG Furniture allowance, Hazard Allowance, Health Service allowance, LASG Clinical Allowance, Inducement allowance, Journal allowance and Non-Taxable Call Duty Allowance, bringing the total take home pay for this category to N111,000.

However, the package currently being offered by the government also ensures that a grade level 10 officer will be taking home about N 173,927.33.

According to Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, “there is an appreciable increase at every level. It is not likely we have 100 percent implementations in one day, we assure the striking doctors that the payment structure is continuous”.

Despite all pleas and attempts by government and Lagosians, to avert the latest strike, such efforts hit the rocks. Regrettably, the issue of strike has almost become a permanent feature in the nation’s health sector, but even as government health institutions in Lagos are reeling under the yoke of a paralysing doctors’ strike, the worse may be yet to come if doctors under the employment of the Federal Government made good their threat to begin a solidarity strike in Lagos this week.

With a current population of more than 18 million people, a government-owned teaching hospital, tertiary health facilities, 24 general hospitals and 276 functional primary health clinics and a health workforce of over 12,000, the burden of implementing this new salary structure in the state is definitely huge.

Furthermore, there are other demands from other sectors, which the state government has to contend with but that shouldn’t be an alibi not to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible.