Declared State of Emergency in health sector – Nurses Tell Government

The National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) has pleaded with the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency to save and sanitise the country’s health sector.

The Chairman, NANNM Public Health Institutions Sector, Mr Wale Olatunde, pointed this out on Wednesday at the on-going annual labour workshop in Abuja with the theme, “Harmonious Trade Dispute Resolution: A Panacea for Healthy Industrial Relationship”.

The chairman said this move was necessary in order to purge the sector of inefficiency and corruption.

The pleaded with the Federal Government to ensure full and urgent implementation of the terms of agreement it entered into with the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) on Sept. 30, 2017.

Olatunde added that there was the urgent need to for the government to save Nigerians from pain and untimely death.

According to him, the agreement was supposed to have been fully implemented five weeks after but almost seven months after, nothing had been done.

NAN reports that he claimed that medical doctors were deliberately ruining the health sector and ensuring industrial disharmony for pecuniary gains.

“This is to promote their private practices that are often the beneficiaries of industrial crisis in the health sector.

“By so doing they make the vast majority of poor Nigerians who cannot afford their private facilities to suffer and die unnecessarily.

“Their allegiance and loyalty is more to their medical profession than to the good people of this country.

“Countries with best health indices within and outside Africa do not leave the administration of the healthcare system in the hands of medical doctors as a birth-right.

“They rather depend on the best hands from within and outside the health sector,” Olatunde said.

He stated that the worship was out to expose the union’s executives at the national and the local levels to the rudiments of trade union practice for efficiency.

Meanwhile, the federal government has appealed to Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) to suspend their strike action pending the outcome of the negotiation going on between the two parties.