By Chioma Obinna
With a new government coming into.power by May 29, 2023, , health workers under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Unions, JOHESU, and the Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations , AHPA, have called for a review of the continuous appointment of physicians as heads of the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH).
In a joint congratulatory message JOHESU and AHPA sent to the president elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu they expressed joy at the sustained democracy that Nigeria has enjoyed since 1999 when the country fully returned to civil rule.
However, the associations also used the letter as a medium to make known their demands that the continuous appointment of physicians as heads of the FMoH policy should change.
The statement reads in parts: “In the current dispensation, the realities in our country are that we need far and wide reaching reforms to generate new building blocks for sustainable development in all frontiers of our collapsing social fabrics.
“Our health sector has been progressively destroyed in the last three dispensations of leadership with special regards to ministerial appointments at the FMoH since 2011 to date when we had to contend with unprecedented destructive proclivities in team spirit of the health workforce orchestrated by the trio of Prof. Christian Chukwu, Prof. Isaac Adewole and Dr. Osagie Ehanire who are all physicians and former ministers of health.
“Today, the health system in Nigeria which is rated 187th out of 191 health systems by the World Health Organisation (WHO) through the machinations of the leadership of physicians stands no chance of redemption except if the president-elect comes up with a unique model of reforms which places a premium on change-agents who are not necessarily health workers to redress the pestiferous propensities in the heavily infested health system of our country as presently nurtured by physicians at the ministerial parastatals and other agencies of the FMoH.”
Continuing, they said for the health sector in Nigeria to become one of the best in the world, the system has to embrace other professionals in the sector and not just concentrate and involve physicians alone as heads of the FMoH.
“At the height of ministerial nomination and screenings in the country, Nigerian physicians have always taken parochial and insulting positions that one of its own must be appointed at the helm of the FMoH because according to it, this is a global practice.
^The Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, in a particular dispensation under Jonathan’s Administration had threatened the then Acting President that it would ground the Health Sector if its position about appointing physicians as the head of the FMoH was not adhered to. This arrogant stance has perennially polarised the health sector with dire consequences.
“Only two different occasions in the past; first in 1985 when Late Professor Olikoye-Ransom-Kuti was the Minister of Health and most recently, under Professor Babatunde Osotimehin, discriminatory salaries and wages were designed for physicians to consign other health workers to ‘houseboy’ status perpetually.
“It is a fact that in these two dispensations of physicians –health ministers, the most junior physicians (House Officer) with only one year experience earned more than other health professionals who would have put in over thirty (30) years of work experience.|
“A regime of discriminatory wages will continue to encourage a vicious cycle of industrial disharmony in the health sector. The antagonistic position of NMA on promoting discriminatory practices in the health sector through collaboration with the Physicians Chief Executive Officers of hospitals and FMoH contravenes the provision of International Labour Organisation Convention 111 which forbids any forms of discrimination in employment and occupation.
“It requires ratifying member states to declare and pursue a national policy designed to promote, by methods appropriate to national conditions and practice, equality of opportunity and treatment in respect of employment and occupation, with a view to eliminating any discrimination in these fields.
“Some of the fallouts of this practice against other health workers include de-motivation, a boost for the unfortunate brain-drain syndrome in the health sector, etc. Brain drain continues to be a major challenge in healthcare practice especially in the public health sector as less than 40 per cent of health professionals produced in the last twenty (20) years practice onshore, ” the letter stated.
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