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By Chioma Obinna

The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN, Lagos State Chapter has called on the National Assembly to organise a public hearing on the need to amend the appropriate sections of the University Teaching Hospital Act to pave way for robust and dynamic health service in tandem with global best practices.

 Making the call during its 2022 Annual Luncheon, the PSN, Lagos State Chairman, Pharm. Gbolagade Iyiola who said the existing Act was a military creation invented as decree 10 of 1985 insisted that specifically, the National Assembly must approve a new condition precedent that opens the closed and restricted frontiers of the leadership of the Federal Health Institutions to include seasoned Administrators and Managers of cognate experience in the ultimate public and professional interest.

Iyiola said after a critical evaluation of the situation, the PSN noted that ~the clause has been employed in truncating normative civility in their collapsed health sector where physician emperors are foisted overall structures of healthcare at Federal, State and Local Government levels.

Continuing, she said “Prior to 1985, it was Health Administrators or Managers who steer the ship of our various health workers to stick and excel in their areas of due competencies.

Stating that the country had a virile health system that produced strong health institutions like University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan which was rated at a crucial juncture as one of the top five Health Facilities in the commonwealth under the watch of an Administrator designated as Hospital Governor, adding that the Act has crippled the system.

“A few decades down the line when a Physician take-over was compelled, the success stories changed into lamentations, and negative health indices including Staggering infant mortality rates, poor under 5 mortality rate, high maternal mortality, worsening morbidity and mortality index in the health system, collapsed infrastructures in hospitals, fake drug syndrome (as a result of the inexperience administration and management of the Federal Ministry of Health), incessant health workers strike and diminished productivity, stagnation of wages, and allowances and benefits of non-physician health workers among others.”

She alleged that in contemporary times, especially in the last three successive dispensations a seeming death knell has been dangling on the health system because these inexperienced physicians literally turned the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) into an official annexe of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) secretariat.

“Some of the landmark ineptitude of this three past and incumbent Ministers include A determined bid to frustrate the Specialist programmes of all non-physician Health Workers especially those that clamoured for Consultant status.  Prof. Chukwu was quoted in 2014 as declaring that the Consultant status was meant for only members of his Physician tribe at a meeting presided over the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, His Excellency, Anyim Pius Anyim to the chagrin of stakeholders present at that meeting.

“For almost 30 years prior to the January 6, 2014 strike of the health workers, no non-physician health worker in the Federal Health Institutions was allowed to get to the peak of his career as Director on the equivalent of GL 17 because the Chief Medical Directors and the Physicians caucus in the Federal Health Institutions deliberately twisted the provisions of the University Teaching Hospital Act to imply that it provided for only 2 Directors which were in the Administrative and Clinical Services Directorate of the Hospitals.  Presently, some of the Chief Medical Directors have glaringly refused to implement existing Federal Ministry of Health Circulars.

The deliberate frustration of every attempt to implement appropriate wages for health workers despite CBAs MOLLs, agreements etc by the Federal Ministry of Health.  A striking one remains the determined efforts of the Federal Ministry of Health to frustrate the adjustment of CONHESS as was done with CONMESS since 2014.

It is notable however that the adjustment of CONHESS which led to the 2018 strike is still lingering because Dr Ehanire who took the baton of the leadership from Prof Adewole is doing everything possible to negate the report of a Technical Committee of government and JOHESU which has been signed since December 2021 on the way forward on the adjustment of CONHESS.

On the establishment of the faculty of pharmacy, Lagos State, Iyiola who noted that 1 pharmacist serves over 5,000 patients in Nigeria said the country seriously falls short of the current World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation.”

She said the Society believes albeit strongly that an improvement in pharmaceutical manpower manufactured drugs and photomedicine, community pharmacists who have been neglected, will help in pharmaceutical care in health facilities.