…after MOU with govt
The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has called off its five-day warning strike, effective 8.00 Monday.
Doctors under the auspices of NARD have therefore been asked to resume work Monday morning.
This follows a meeting between executives of NARD and Labour Minister, Chris Ngige, as well as the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Health, at the weekend and the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the government.
Emeka Orji, president of NARD said the strike had been temporarily called off after a later meeting of NARD’s National Executive Council (NEC).
Orji said the decision was reached after a three-hour meeting by the association’s national executive council on Sunday.
He added that the suspension of the strike will be for a period of two weeks during which NARD would make an evaluation of government’s response to its demands.
Olajide Oshundun , spokesman of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, said in a statement on Sunday that a Memorandum of Understanding was signed at the end of a conciliation meeting convened by the minister of labour.
The doctors are demanding an immediate increment in the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure to the tune of 200 percent of their current gross salaries.
Other demands are for the immediate payment of the 2023 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF), tangible steps on the “upward review” of the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) and payment of all salary arrears owed its members since 2015.
NARD is further asking for an immediate volume recruitment of clinical staff in the hospitals and abolishment of the bureaucratic limitations to the immediate replacement of doctors and nurses who leave the system.
They also want the immediate review of hazard allowance by all state governments including private tertiary health institutions where any form of residency training is done.
The resident doctors also expressed worry that their members in Abia State “have been on strike for several months for perennial non-payment of salaries.”
Nigeria has about 10,000 resident doctors according to NARD estimates for November 2022. In total, there are 24,000 doctors including consultants, resident doctors, medical officers engaged in the country’s health sector.
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors is an affiliate of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). It has 76 branches domiciled mainly in Federal and State-owned Teaching Hospitals.
Nigeria currently has 22 teaching hospitals, 20 federal medical centres and 17 specialist hospitals.
The five-day warning strike by Resident Doctors reportedly paralysed activities at most of the country’s 22 teaching hospitals.
Reports indicate that only consultant doctors were attending to patients in the absence of the striking resident doctors.
The consultants are said to have been overwhelmed by the number of patients they need to attend to on a daily basis, leaving several patients stranded across the country.
The NMA said recently that Nigeria has about 24, 000 actively licensed physicians caring for its over 200 million population as a result of brain drain in the country.
“Based on WHO established minimum threshold, a country needs a mix of 23 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 population to deliver essential maternal and child health services. This explains why Nigeria ranks as one of the countries with the worst maternal and child mortality rates.”
