Posted on: Fri 19-08-2022

Members of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo, Ondo State, have embarked on a two-week warning strike.

The doctors shut down services, yesterday, after the association’s general meeting in Owo, with a communique to that effect.

The association’s President, Dr. Gideon Olaopa, said the strike was inevitable as they were working ‘under dire stressful conditions.’

He said there were only 80 resident doctors and health officers currently in the employment of the hospital.

Besides, Olaopa said that no employment had been carried out in the hospital since 2018, saying that the hospital used to have about 300 doctors and house officers but that many of them have left the system.

Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Liasu Adeagbo, did not pick calls to his phone to speak on the matter, but Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Olufunsho Ijanusi, confirmed the industrial action, saying the management of the hospital would handle the situation.

Ijanusi disclosed that the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Adeagbo, had just returned from Abuja where he had a meeting with the leadership of the ARD, appealing to them to be patient.

He said that there were lots of bureaucratic bottlenecks causing delay in the employment of more hands in the hospital but assured that the management would soon find a lasting solution to the challenge.

---

---