INTERVIEW

 

Dr Ajibayo Adeyeye is the Majority Leader of Lagos State House of Assembly and Medical Doctor (anesthesiologists) by profession. In this interview with Lagos Assembly Correspondents, Adeyeye justifies current industrial action by the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) as he blames the society and non-allied health professionals for perennial conflicts in the health sector. WOLE OYEBADE was there. Excerpts.

 

. AS a lawmaker with medical background, what is your take on the current industrial action by the NMA?

The strike by the doctors is unfortunate. I am never happy, when I see hospitals closed, particularly public hospitals in our own society, where there are so many people who cannot access private healthcare. I want us to also look at why they go on strike. I don't want to hold brief for NMA and will limit my reaction to what we see in media. There is this unhealthy rivalry in the health sector, where you see that nurses, lab technologists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and all the allied health professionals are on one side and the doctors are on another side.

 

It is unfortunate that I am reacting to this as a medical doctor. No matter how dispassionate I claim to be, the average person reading this is likely to still see it as a biased comment.

 

. Has the rivalry always been this fierce among health workers that should work as a team?

The reality is and what we met when we were training and graduated to know was that doctors are the leaders of the health sector. It is not important when a doctor graduates - today, yesterday or 10 years ago - the moment he assumes the role of a doctor, he becomes the leader of the team, whether the nurse or lab scientists had being in service for 30 or 40 years or not.

 

. Why should that be the case?

First and foremost, everybody that leaves his house to the hospital has come to see the doctor. Nobody left his house to see a nurse or a lab technologist or a physiotherapist. That was what we met on ground. Even as a House Officer, when I conducted my ward-round in Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), very senior matrons would follow me around. They are not following me because I am their boss; I was just on Level-9 and some of them were on Level-16. It has to do with the profession, which I represent and theirs that they represent. If I am in the ward and you (nurse) are not there to hear my instructions, you are not likely to carry out the instructions to the benefit of the patient. If you want to read my instructions after my ward-round, that is not the way the medical profession was set up by the founding fathers. Go anywhere in the world, when the doctor is going on a ward-round, all the health professionals would follow.

 

But, what do we have here and now? You'd see a situation where nurses and allied health professionals don't want to take instructions from doctors - to the detriment of the patient. So, you would not get the expected result and I think that is the most important aspect of the doctors' agitation; every other thing is just by the way. All these crises came about from what we have been clamouring for long time ago. It is only in our medical practice that you see just anybody coming to give treatment to sick people. Yet, such fellow is not a member of the NMA nor had been training anywhere. The truth is that there are more quacks practicing medicine in Lagos than qualified doctors - maybe 10-times more than the real doctors.

 

The state machinery that was set up to solve the problem, honestly speaking, doesn't have the capacity to solve the problem and all these problems arose from quackery. Quacks get away with anything that even the qualified people could not get away with. The state officials would challenge the doctor the way they cannot challenge quacks. You find quacks all over the place, because they have managed to treat some people, they think they can do the work, but they cannot.

 

Ours is a profession that requires very rigorous learning and it is not something you just dabble into. It is the only profession in the medical field, where you are taught everything, you are taught physiotherapy, nursing, pharmacy and others because you are supposed to know a little about everything on the field. You are even taught how to lay a bed because if they did not lay the bed very well, you should be able to tell them to do it well.

 

. Should other health workers be eligible to head health institutions?

I don't know how they want non-allied professionals to head hospitals. I have said it many times that I have no problem having a non-allied professional becoming a Commissioner for Health or Minister of health; it means nothing to me, but I probably would have a problem with the Permanent Secretary (PS) of the ministry of health not being a medical doctor because he would probably not know what he is doing and that is the truth.

 

The technocrats that head all the departments must be doctors, but the political head doesn't have to be a doctor. If he (political head) can create the office of a Surgeon General - to direct health policies, which is also one of the things the NMA is asking for - I think it is okay. But, by and large, the position is with the public and they can decide where they want to go.

 

I don't think the doctors are in competition with anybody. I spoke with one of the leaders of NMA and I told them to stop answering questions that non-allied professionals are asking. As an employer of doctors, I have never asked for the certificate of a doctor. I only need to speak to him or her and I would know if the person is a doctor or not because it is a culture or a language that you must know. I feel the issue would be addressed.

 

. There is a moral issue here. Are doctors supposed to go on strike and hold the public, especially in a place like Lagos, to ransom to press home such demands?

I have heard this question since I became a medical doctor, but I disagree with anybody that says I must not seek a livelihood. Yes, medicine is a profession, but it is the livelihood of those that are practicing the profession. In everything you do, survival is number one. Your wife goes to the same market patronised by that of the doctors. Your children also attend the same schools like those of doctors. He (doctor) would not go to another planet to rent a house. The reality is that many doctors cannot train their own children to become doctors anymore. To be a doctor now, you have to go to a good secondary school and make the kind of grades that would allow you study medicine. Unfortunately, our doctors have been impoverished such that they cannot afford to put their children in the kind of schools that would make them gain admission to study medicine.

 

But the same public you (doctors) are claiming to serve are now saying despite the efforts you have to put into high Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) score and having the best of West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) Results, and despite not going on holidays for six years in medical school like your peers in the university do, among other sacrifices, you now graduate and somebody would say you don't have a right to good life. I don't think it would go down well with doctors.

 

The solution is for the society to treat them well like they would treat other professionals. You see an architect or engineer who would collect millions of naira as 3.15 per cent from the cost of a building project and lawyer takes 10 per cent of a case won. How many percentage of your life does a doctor collect and how many percentage do you give them for saving your live? I am not of the belief that doctors must not go on strike but they should be treated fairly in the society. It is, therefore, most unlike you would want to go back to medical practice after your fling in politics

 

This is a very big question. I became doctor 24 years ago and I practiced actively for 18 years. I did some humanitarian jobs as Majority Leader of the House. I am an anesthetist and we don't have many in this State. Till date, some hospitals still call me in some emergency cases, so I can say that I have practiced for 20 years out of those 24 years. I missed the profession dearly and I am always afraid of having the dexterity of old, as an anesthetist because it is a very bold job. If I have to go back to that actively, I would require some trainings and refresher courses. I am not sure if I would be willing to do that. I may stop holding elective offices later in life, but I will never stop being a politician. I even want to encourage all of you to go and join our party for Nigeria to change. All of us need to join partisan politics, though may not necessarily contest public offices.

 

. Many of the doctors that are on strike have returned to their private hospitals...

You must realize that we have a very acute shortage of doctors nationwide. There are less than 100,000 doctors in this country and Lagos probably boasts of 40 to 50 per cent of all the doctors in Nigeria and even at that they are still short. I can tell you again that most of the big hospitals cannot function without doctors from public hospitals because they cannot afford to employ specialist doctors. All they do is to admit you and their younger doctors look after you while specialists would come around as necessary. If they need a neuro surgeon, they would go to LUTH or LASUTH to do the job for them. That has been the practice; it is the practice all over the world.

 

It is almost impossible to find a doctor that is highly skilled that can be in one place. Doctors would always move round and they have to find a way of covering one place or the other until we are able to bridge the gap.

 

Source:

The Guardian