Dr Casmir Ifeanyi is the chairman, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), Abuja chapter. In this interview with our senior reporter, DAVID ADUGE-ANI, he speaks on health-related issues in the country, especially on the planned strike by members of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA

What is your take on the looming strike action by members of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA?

Before going into what their demands are, I would like to situate properly that as workers you may have to resort sometimes to strike to press home your demands, but it must be done under the purview of the labour law.

Now what are the demands? They are firstly, an improved funding for the residency programme. If you ask me, it is the Father Christmas nature of the Nigerian nation that has led to the continued funding of postgraduate trainings for Nigerian doctors.

Lawyers go for postgraduate trainings; they are not funded by government. Other professionals like engineers, architects and media practitioners go for post graduate trainings, but they are never funded by government. However doctors in Nigeria have been able to negotiate that with government, but it is not the practice across the globe.

So one of their demands is an improved funding for their overseas residency training components, because according to them, funds have been a problem for such trainings.

However, the only point I want to score is that the Nigerian people and government are being short-changed by Nigerian doctors under this residency training programme.

Take for instance, government has been involved in the training of fresh doctors to become consultants in various fields. While a doctor is doing that training, he is under paid employment as a student because residency is actually studentship. And when he graduates, it is either he travels out of the country or he sets up his own private practice, even though they are working as full paid employers with government hospitals.

They don’t give anything at all in return to the Nigerian people or government whose funds were used for their trainings or make any return to the government who has trained them.

I think it is high time government came up with a bonding policy in the residency programme that would make it compulsory for these doctors who were trained with public funds to give back to the system that has given them so much for their own development.

 

Decay infrastructure in hospitals

Their second demand is the existence of dilapidated and decayed infrastructure in the public hospitals in the country. To me that is laughable, because towards the end of Obasanjo administration, there was the federal intervention programme that took place in virtually all the tertiary hospitals and federal medical centres in the country. That was done not too long from now, so where then is the decay in the hospitals?

What really happened is that since 1985 to date, clinicians have been the exclusive managers of our hospitals in Nigeria. Are they now saying that they don’t have the capacity to manage? Are they saying that their colleagues who have been the managing directors and chief medical directors in our hospitals have failed us?

That is why I said in the beginning that the current looming strike by the NMA is illegal because the association is not a trade union. Our labour laws and in conformity with the ILO laws, it is not supposed to call out their members for strike. So it is illegal.

Any strike that is not people-centred is anti-people and irresponsible. Whatever we are doing in the health sector should be tantamount to the well-being of the patients so that the patients are better served. This strike is not done so that patients are better served. So it is for self-aggrandisement and self-serving.

Another demand by the doctors is that before now other health care professionals have been appointed consultants in Nigeria, including those serving and retired, but the NMA is claiming that it is an aberration in Nigeria. It is really not proper.

Double salaries by Nigerian doctors

Further to their demand is the new policy of government on Integrated Personnel Payroll System, IPPS platform, which is a very noble intervention by government to curb wastages and stealing from the public service. It has worked so well that it has salvaged funds for government from issues of ghost workers and multiplicity of earning.

You see before now, the average doctor in Nigeria has been robbing government. Those of them in the tertiary hospitals collect money from teaching as salary. They also collect money again as consultants, which means they collect double salaries. But the introduction of IPSS has curbed the issue of some doctors earning double salaries, especially in the tertiary hospitals.

 

Solutions

Government should introduce a system. The bases for accessing universal health care to most Nigerians should be through the national health insurance scheme. The reason is simple, if that is the bases for accessing healthcare for most Nigerians, it will mean that if the National Hospital, Abuja is my primary health care provider and they go on strike, I will approach my health managers to change my primary health provider. It is high time we brought in professional groups to abide by the rules of this country.