Resident Doctors’ nationwide industrial action has paralysed medical services at the major medical centres all over the country including the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) and University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan among others.
The President of the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria (NARD) at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Dr. Babatunde Babasanya said that the government has not been sincere toward alleviating “the suffering of everybody”.
“ Our doctors don’t even take their cars to work again because they can’t fuel it. How do they expect us to cope when we come to work by 7.a.m. and leave by 10 p.m ?”
Babasanya also said that the residency training programme had witness many severe challenges, mostly under-funding.
But the Public Relations Officer of the centre, Lawal Bala, said the management had deployed consultants to fill in the gap caused by the strike, assuring that services at the hospital would not be grounded.
Also the Chief Medical Director, ABUTH, Prof. Khalid Lawal confirmed to the press that the hospital has been able to deploy consultants as a stop gap measure.
Lawal pointed out that the consultants had been deployed to provide skeletal services at the hospital.
“Our consultants are providing skeletal services in the hospital, our Accident and Emergency unit is also providing its usual essential services. Even during the previous strike our consultants provided skeletal services,” he said.
However, Lawal assured that that most of the patients on ground had “less severe illnesses” and were discharged by the doctors.
It was also gathered at the National Eye Centre, there were no patients seen waiting at the Out-Patient Department had no doctors to attend to them.
Besides, Dr Yohanna Joseph, the Chairman of the Resident Doctors Association of the centre said they had joined the indefinite strike.
Joseph said the strike will continue until all issues of training, work conditions and salary are fully addressed.
The spokesman of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Alhaji Oba-Hassan Kadiri, also said that only patients with special medical cases were being attended to at the hospital.
The doctors embarked on the industrial action over the non-payment of their wages as well as ineffective implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).