Admin l Wednesday, November 08, 2017
IKEJA, Lagos, Nigeria – At a time when many thought that healthcare would get major chunk of the nation’s budget, bearing in mind his recent health challenges which took him outside Nigeria for medical help, President Muhammadu Buhari again demonstrated his lack of willingness to take an urgent look at the poor state of health facilities in Nigeria.
Looking at the budget he presented on the floor of the National Assembly on Tuesday, it seems the focus of the President is on the Ministry of Interior, which gulped the lion’s share of N510.87 billion, while health got just N269.34 billion.
This is taking place despite public outcry on the need for government to take concrete steps to address challenges in the area. Not too long ago, resident doctors embarked on strike.
In May, 2017 workers from Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, staged a one-day peaceful protest demanding for improved condition of service and tools.
The protest was led by the all the unions’ leaders in the LUTH, including the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives and Association of Resident Doctors. Others are the Medical and Health Workers’ Union, Joint Health Sector Unions and Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associated Institutions.
Some of the placards read: “Federal Ministry of Health pay us our teaching allowance’’; “Stop stagnation’’; “Nurses are professionals that should be respected and not treated as slaves’’.
“Is LUTH truly a public hospital?”; “Pay our withheld salaries and allowances”; “Provide conducive working environment”, and “Put a stop to scale to scale promotion”.
NANNM Chairman, LUTH chapter, Mrs Yemisi Adelaja said all the unions in LUTH decided to hold a joint meeting and protest to be able to “speak with one voice and let the whole world know our challenges’’.Their grievances include the deteriorating state of infrastructure and non-availability of adequate medical consumables are situations that have progressively gone worse in recent times.
“Most of our health institutions today operate a nurse-patient ratio of one to 15 as against the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommendation of one to four. Inadequate manpower and dearth of highly skilled nurse specialists has greatly affected our clinical outputs and nurses’ health. If the workload is on the workers, it will definitely affect the patient’s health, because most times this affects the attitude of nurses due to pressure,” Adelaja said.
Nigerians were stunned even when the first lady, Aisha Buhari said that the Staff Clinic in Aso Rock lacked syringes despite billions set aside for the clinic. This development forced Nigerians to call on the President o direct his focus on healthcare in Nigeria. But it seems Nigerians will need to wait a little bit longer.
The President who projected personnel cost to rise by 12 percent in 2018 mainly due to provision for staff promotion arrears, and recruitment by the Military, Police Force and para-military agencies directed all government agencies to stop further recruitment.
“ Furthermore, I have directed agencies are not to embark on any fresh recruitment unless they have obtained all the requisite approvals. Any breach of this directive will be severely sanctioned”, he threatened.
