NARD Strike: Corps members, college students medical doctors deployed in Abuja hospital

The Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, Abuja mentioned it drafted locum medical doctors, serving youth corps medical doctors and home officers to offset scarcity of manpower attributable to the continuing strike by the Nationwide Affiliation of Resident Medical doctors (NARD).

The hospital’s Head of Medical Companies, Dr Joseph Eziechila, mentioned they needed to take the measure to keep away from shutdown in order to proceed to take care of sufferers.

He mentioned: “We needed to assume out of the field on preserve providers. Resident medical doctors are the bedrock of healthcare supply as a result of they’re extra in quantity.

“Right here, we’ve got near 100 consultants however the resident medical doctors, youth corps members and others will quantity like 350, so they’re the primary workforce.

“When sufferers go to the hospital, they’re the primary level of name earlier than you contact the consultants if there are points.

“Nonetheless, what we did on this case is that we’ve got some youth corps medical doctors and we nonetheless have just a few locum medical doctors, we’ve got home officers that aren’t a part of the strike and we’ve got principal medical officers.

“So, as a lot as we are able to, we attempt to make use of those individuals to maintain providers, the emergencies working and another factors of service supply in order that the hospital shouldn’t be utterly shut down.”

The five-day warning strike entered its third day on Friday. Hospitals have needed to make changes to their schedules to accommodate as many sufferers as doable.

Mr Eziechila mentioned that the state of affairs had prompted the consultants to do some additional work.

He added that “although it’s a quick strike, we’ve got to mobilise all of the consultants. Within the outpatient clinic, we’ve got to mobilise all of the consultants to work exterior their regular schedule.

“If you happen to get there now, we’ve got like 4 of the consultants on the similar time, the consultants working the specialist clinic additionally run their clinic on their very own.

“The place it turns into an issue is that if the strike is extended; however I needed to name a gathering with the departments to enchantment to them to go the additional mile for this very quick time.”

He, nonetheless, mentioned that the hospital didn’t have an inflow of sufferers as earlier than, including that information of the strike routinely reduces the excessive fee of hospital visits by sufferers.

In keeping with him, as quickly as sufferers hear that medical doctors are on strike, they somewhat keep again, not figuring out that measures have been put in place to make sure that they’re attended to.

NARD served a letter of warning strike to the Federal authorities on Tuesday, saying it couldn’t assure additional industrial concord ought to the federal government fail to handle points raised earlier than Might 29.

Within the letter, the affiliation issued a two-week ultimatum to the federal authorities to resolve points as contained within the ultimatum earlier than its expiration on Might 13.

The medical doctors are demanding a direct increment within the Consolidated Medical Wage Construction to the tune of 200 per cent of present gross salaries of medical doctors.

NARD can be demanding the speedy withdrawal of the Invoice in search of to compel medical and dental graduates to serve compulsorily in Nigeria for 5 years earlier than getting full licence to practise.

It additionally needs speedy domestication of the Medical Residency Coaching Act and evaluate of Hazard Allowance by state governments.

The five-day warning strike which began on Wednesday ended on Friday.

(NAN)