Doctors to FG: Pay our salaries, upgrade hospitals

Striking doctors in the nation's teaching hospitals insist that the Federal Government must address fully their demands,BUKOLA ADEBAYOwrites
The end to the strike embarked upon by resident doctors in the nation's teaching hospital may not be near.
Reason: the striking doctors are insisting that the Federal Government must fufill all their needs before they return to work. They want the immediate resolution of all issues, particularly the ones bordering on the provision of facilities in hospitals and their salaries.
According to the Vice-President of the National Association of Resident Doctors, Dr. Harrison Okowa, the non-payment of salaries is taking a toll on their welfare and training.
Okowa, who noted that the decision to abstain from work was a painful one, said their continued working without pay could endanger the lives of their patients.
He said, "More than 70 per cent of resident doctors in teaching hospitals in the country have not been paid for the past five or six months. We are the ones transporting and feeding ourselves, paying for the courses we need. We are saying, pay us our salaries that we have worked for, we are not asking for an increment in salaries, we cannot continue to treat patients, perform surgeries, and do day and night shifts — seven days in a row on a hungry stomach.
"Before we embarked on this strike, we had gone to meet with the government officials in Abuja several times. In fact, we explored all means of logic and lobbying to seek a solution to it, but we did not get any response. We gave an ultimatum several times. They did not budge."
Little wonder today in hospitals such as the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos, and the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano State, the authorities are turning patients back.
Okowa also explained that the strike was to stop the recurring poor funding of the residency programmes by the government.
Resident doctors are doctors in training to become specialists and consultants in various medical fields. They are the first line of doctors that patients meet when they go to teaching hospitals; they are also actively involved in the training of medical students and house officers.
Okowa, a resident doctor at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Edo State, said the programme for training consultants was grossly underfunded and failure to reverse this trend would give birth to half-baked specialists.
He noted that many of the teaching hospitals did not have the needed medical facilities to enhance their training.
He added, "As a resident doctor, we should do at least four to six courses before we write examinations to be certified as consultants. Government sponsors this programmes because they are extremely expensive but what we have now is that they pay for just one or two courses.
"If you don't have money to pay for the other courses yourself, then you are stuck. Even when you pay for them, there may be no consultants on the ground to teach. The reason is that many of them are outside the country.
"It is disheartening to know that some of our teaching hospitals do not have CT Scan, MRI or radiotherapy machines. These are sophisticated heath care equipment that would help us work as specialists. We need to be properly taught. The chief medical directors are trying to manage the funds they get internally and the peanuts they get from government to train us but it can never be enough if government does not make a conscious effort to fund training of specialists."
According to him, this poor funding is a major factor why the hospitals face the dearth of specialists in the last two decades and patients are to endure the most of the decline in the quality of medical training given to doctors.
He noted, "Nigerians must realise that we are also fighting for their health by this strike. If resident doctors are not well trained, they will not have the skill to perform some medical procedures. Patients that need such treatment have to travel abroad for it and those that cannot afford foreign medical treatment may die of the ailment.
"We are experiencing a dearth of specialists in our tertiary hospitals because we are not training enough doctors to become consultants due to gross underfunding. We have as little as 35 neurosurgeons to 160 million Nigerians. It is almost falling apart."
Throwing more light, Dr. Peter Ogunnubi said many resident doctors have to travel from one state to another because the tertiary hospitals where they were to do their training lacked the needed facilities and infrastructure.
He said, "What is happening now is that once you are a resident doctor, they don't care if the hospital has the facilities or equipment for your specialist training. After two or three years, you write examinations as a specialist. If you pass, then you are a consultant.
"There is no policy to ensure that the hospital has the infrastructure for the training. So, a doctor in the teaching hospital in the University College Hospital, Ibadan, where they have more facilities, is more refined than the one in Lagos or Abuja. But if you can pass the examinations you are a consultant.
"Some are even failing these examinations because the hospitals where they are doing their residency do not have infrastructure for some courses; so they travel from the north or south to UCH to get it done and go back to their various hospitals for the examinations."
They called on the government to put an end to this by addressing their demands as a means to improving the quality of health care delivery to Nigerians.
However, the suffering is not peculiar to only patients; the training of medical students, house officers and other intern doctors in teaching hospitals also feel the impact of the strike.
An intern doctor with LUTH, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told our correspondent that the absence of resident doctors, who are their first line trainers, was affecting their education.
He said, "Resident doctors are the ones that teach us directly. We only see consultants just once or twice a week. Sometimes, it takes months. But now that they are not around, we are just attending to patients, not necessarily learning anything new."
However, even as the striking doctors vow that the action will continue, the National President, Nigerian Medical Association, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, noted that there was hope of resolving the dispute soonest.
The NMA boss, who spoke to our correspondent on Monday, said the association was working with the government to ensure the speedy payment of the salaries and implementation of other requests of the striking doctors.