The Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) said yesterday that the suspension of resident doctors would render specialist care under threat

 

Speaking after it's meeting in Abuja yesterday, the group warned of “grave consequences in the delivery of specialist health care services.”

 

President of MDCAN, Dr Steven Oluwole, listed areas that would suffer from the suspension of residency training to include special care baby units, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, oncology and other specialties.

 

His words: “It is not clear to the MDCAN how Mr. President intends to recruit trainees into the programme. It is not clear how junior and senior residents will be produced at the take off of the programme, or perhaps we will wait for the next five to 10 years to produce the first batch of senior residents.

 

"It is not clear how the special care baby units, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, oncology and other specialties will be recreated to produce tertiary level care if this programme takes off.

 

"This suspension, which truncates more than four decades of investments in medical training, presents a future too bleak to contemplate. Members of the MDCAN, who are the trainers of the resident doctors, were not consulted before taking a decision of this monumental magnitude.

 

“The residency training programme is designed to produce specialists in all fields of the practice of medicine. Although the programme commenced in Nigeria over 40 years ago, it is still being developed, and remodeled.

 

"MDCAN is not aware of any country in the history of residency training where the Director of Residency Training is the Head of State.

 

“While the Honourable Minister of Health, the Chief Medical Adviser to Mr. President, is a Professor of Medicine and a trainer of residents, and while doctors of repute have covertly or overtly supported and endorsed this aberrant innovation, the MDCAN strongly recommends Mr. President to suspend further development and continuation of  mechanism,  arrangement and purport  that have been put in place to drive or to execute this project, which we predict will spell doom for tertiary health care delivery in Nigeria.”

 

By EMEKA ANUFORO