A serious crisis is looming in the health sector as all medical workers and other professional bodies in the health system jointly addressed a press conference in Abuja on Monday and told President Goodluck Jonathan not to sign into law the Health Bill passed by the National Assembly last week.
The workers, under the Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations and Union, threatened to disrupt activities in the health sector and embark on industrial action if President Jonathan signed the Health Bill into law.
They accused the doctors of manipulations, saying the doctors had doctored the provisions of the bill to only favour themselves against other professionals in the health sector and the interests of Nigerians and Nigeria as a country.
“If President Jonathan goes ahead to pass the Health Bill into law, the answer is obvious, it will take the crisis in the health sector to higher level. We are all Nigerians, trained to provide services in the health sector. It will be met with stiff opposition, legal and extra-legal, professional and extra-professional.
“We will disrupt the heath care service; we will take every means to ensure that there is no peace in the health sector. The action will include nationwide strike, we will down tools until our demands are met. This time round, we are going to meet this with stiff opposition, because the consequences are better imagined.
“If the bill is allowed to be passed into law, one wonders what the health sector will be. The issue must be corrected; we can no longer continue like this,” the associations, led by the first vice-president, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), Dr Godswill Okara, said.
The associations and unions involved are AMLSN; the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN); National Associations of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM); Association of Radiographers of Nigeria (ARN); Nigerian Society of Physiotherapy (NSP); Health Information Managers Association of Nigeria (HIMAN) and the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN).
Others are Nigerian Union of Pharmacists, Medical Scientists and Professions Allied to Medicine (UNPMTPAM); Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes, and Associated Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI), and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU).
Reading the text of the press conference, Dr Okara said the Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations and Trade Unions was an umbrella body of registered regulated professionals associations and trade unions in the health sector, which comprised responsible and highly skilled members and individuals.
He said since the introduction of the draft National Bill in 2004, they had continued to caution that “some provocative and conflicting provisions in the draft bill should be expunged, in order to avoid worsening the disharmony in the health sector.”
He added that the late President Umaru Yar’Adua withheld assent to the bill when it was first passed by the National Assembly.
Citing example of what he referred to as obnoxious provision, Dr Okara condemned Section 1, sub-section 1; Section 1 sub-section 1(d); Section 8 sub-section 1 and 2; and Section 9 sub section 1(c).
He explained that every profession in the health sector had statutory regulatory body charged with specific responsibility of determining the standards of knowledge and skills to be attained by its practitioners and regulating their practice.
He, therefore, said the bill should not, in any way, overtly or covertly usurp or infringe on these specific legal and statutory functions of various professional regulatory councils and boards in the health sector as Section 1(1) provided.
The associations condemned the power given to the medical doctors in the bill, which was against what was obtainable in the world.
Dr Okara said “it is a well known fact that medical practitioners have formed the habit of obstructing the implemen-tation of the approved scheme of service for other health care professionals in our hospitals and Ministry of Health in Nigeria today.
“This habitual display of arbitrariness and violation of the scheme of service of others has been a constant source of disharmony in the health sector.
“The Nigerian Medical Association and the Minister of Health are seeking to legitimise this culture of tyranny in the health sector, through the National Health Bill.
“We say no to it and we call on all men and women of goodwill in Nigeria, who wish our health sector well to appeal to President Goodluck Jonathan not to sign the bill into law until it is corrected.”
They frowned on the provision that also said the executive chairman of the National Tertiary Hos-pitals Commission shall be a medical doctor, saying that modern health care delivery system was a multi-disciplinary and multi-professional endeavour.
The associations said the declining condition of the health sector and hospitals in Nigeria since 1984, when medical doctors allegedly hijacked the administrative position from professional hospital administrators, did not support the continued exclusive appointment of medical doctors as chief executive officers of health care agencies.
They said all their contributions during the public hearing and presentations at various fora, which were earlier adopted, were discovered to have been removed through the manipulation by the doctors, in connivance with the Ministry of Health and the minister.
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Medical workers threaten nationwide strike •Over passage of health bill •Tell Jonathan not to sign the bill •Accuse doctors of…