I AM a pharmacist, a proud one at that. I remember that in 1989 when I gained admission into the pharmacy school at Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, the highest mark in the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination by both medicine and pharmacy applicants was scored by a pharmacy intake. In my first year in school, medical and pharmacy students did same courses but one. Yet, a pharmacy student still had the best overall grade. At Ife and other pharmacy schools that I know, nobody ever gets admission into pharmacy if he did not choose pharmacy as his first choice. The only other route is to change your course to pharmacy if you have excellent results in your department. The relevant records are still there for those who wish to check them out. So where comes the illusion that it was those who are not brilliant enough to read medicine that were being shipped to other courses allied to medicine.

 

In my third year, a colleague was withdrawn from pharmacy school for academic reasons. He was then admitted into Year 2 to study Computer Science with Economics. He did not only graduate as one of the best in his new department, he is today more successful in every sense of the word than most of his colleagues that he left in pharmacy. There is hardly any year that the cut-off points for admission into Computer Science is not greater than Pharmacy in O.A.U. So, on what basis can one probably start a comparison of Pharmacy and Computer Science to determine which is superior or inferior?

 

The Pharmacist and indeed other health care professionals have no reason to want to become doctors. What they want is for the doctor to refrain from wanting to encroach into practices of other health professionals and obey the laws that regulate individual practices. They also want doctors to desist from the practice of insisting that other health workers be paid remuneration that are ridiculously below theirs.

 

The law does not permit the doctor to be in charge of drug procurement as is being practised in many Nigerian hospitals today. The law forbids a non-pharmacist to dispense ethical drugs even in private hospitals but today, quacks and auxiliary nurses are recruited by doctors in private practice to dispense steroids and the most delicate of controlled drugs.

 

Framers of the laws regulating pharmacy practice discourage the setting up of privately owned pharmacies in government hospitals. Today, many Chief Medical Directors have either unilaterally or in connivance with commissioners or minister of health (who are doctors) established private pharmacies in government hospitals. Most of them enjoy controlling shares in these profit maximizing outlets through their fronts and cronies. Who then is trying to become what through the backdoor?

 

The law permits a first degree holder to rise up to Grade Level 17 in the civil service as long as he passes the required examinations and meets every other requirement, but doctors, through Chief Medical Directors in the Federal Government hospitals do everything within their means to frustrate promotion of non-doctors above Grade Level 15. In fact, doctors do not disguise their phobia for seeing non-doctors in the directorate cadre. The list of doctors' infractions of the law in the name of being the supreme ones in the health sector cannot be exhausted in a single write up. Most unfortunately, some of these are already being exported to a few other African countries.

 

When some of these illegalities are successfully contested in competent courts of law and judgments obtained, 'the powers that be' have devised means of circumventing such judgments, just like they are doing with the current contemptuous strike.

 

That most doctors speak about the military era with nostalgia cannot surprise anyone that has been following events in the health sector in the last three decades. It was during the Babangida regime that the leadership of the Nigerian Medical Association used their closeness to the military to get Decree 10 promulgated which essentially amend the laws that prescribe fairness and harmony in the health sector to ones that make the doctor a demigod, and accord to him salaries and emoluments that were skies above his other contemporaries in the health sector. It was indeed during this era that doctors were able to corner every position that matters in the health sector to themselves. Administrative posts that were hitherto held by professional administrators and social scientists as is being practised in civilised climes, were hijacked by medical doctors. In any gathering of decision makers in the health ministry today, more than 75% of the roll call will be medical doctors.

 

Even when committees are set up in hospitals on issues that are clearly non-medical like socials and sports, the doctor still wants to be the head otherwise the committees and their work are denied the necessary recognition and funds.

 

When Julius Adelusi Adeluyi, a revered technocrat and widely travelled and experienced pharmacist and administrator was made minister of health in the era of the Interim National Government, doctors under the aegis of NMA cried blue murder demanding his immediate replacement with a doctor. When their call was not heeded, they did all they could to undermine him until his last day in office. His offence - a pharmacist should not be seen to preside over doctors. At the time the name of Prof. Dora Akunyili of blessed memory was being muted as minister of health when President Jonathan wanted to form a new cabinet after the death of President Yar'Adua, the doctors threatened fire and brimstone until her name was dropped for that of a doctor. This happened despite the sterling achievements of Dora at NAFDAC that brought her local and international accolades.

 

Is this not a clear indication that doctors would rather have a mediocre as minister of health than having a well-trained, qualified and competent non-doctor? In the past few years, at least two confirmed Nigerian doctors were widely reported to have actively participated in armed robbery. Is that not evidence that it is foolhardy to claim that all doctors are equipped for and will perform well in leadership roles, as some of them would have us believe?

 

It is advisable that Nigerian doctors accept the team work approach to medical practice as is the norm in civilized societies. The current scenario that makes the doctor sees himself as GOD and other health workers as lesser beings can only portend doom for medical practice in Nigeria. The current practice that assigns the doctor to almost all administrative posts in the health sector and makes him feed fat while others settle for crumbs is no longer sustainable and will only make the health sector crisis a recurring decimal.

 

Concluded (READ PART 1)

 

By Odedeyi Adekunle

 

About the author

Adekunle is a practising pharmacist from Ogun State.