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My Reaction To The Suspension Of Doctor's Residency Programme By The Federal Government Of Nigeria By Dr. Ijabla Raymond

August 18, 2014

In my view, both the NMA and the FGN have received very bad service from their respective advisers.

In an effort to end the doctor’s strike embarked upon by the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) on July 1st, 2014, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) suspended medical post-graduate training (also known as residency programme) on August 15th, 2014; effectively sacking nearly 16,000 resident doctors.
 

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Dr. Ijabla Raymond

My first reaction was utter disbelief.
 
In my view, both the NMA and the FGN have received very bad service from their respective advisers.
 
THE NMA:
The WHO declared the Ebola outbreak an international public health emergency on August 8th, 2014. Given this development, one would expect that the NMA would temporarily suspend the strike and allow doctors to return to work, whilst its representatives continue to engage the government and other stakeholders. It reflects very badly on the country that its doctors are on strike during a major international public health emergency. Nigerian doctors should be the ones at the frontline coordinating international responses and efforts to contain this outbreak.
 
[story_link align="left"]34545[/story_link]Earlier, in an article published on Sahara reporters (http://bit.ly/1pXKsGI), I warned about how this strike could damage the public image of Nigerian doctors. There is a general sense that the NMA has not done enough to persuade the public about the legitimacy of its demands, and continuing this strike in the face of an international public health emergency is very unlikely to improve its public image.
 
There is also a moral and ethical question here – what happened to the Hippocratic oath?
 
THE GOVERNMENT:
The sacking of resident doctors is ill advised, and is a reflection of the type of advisers that surround our decision makers. Even if this were a contingency plan to contain the Ebola outbreak we have not seen any government blueprint or a framework for how this would be achieved.
 
[story_link align="left"]34495[/story_link]If any doctor or any other health professional had second thought about leaving the country, this event would have made this decision easier for them to make.
 
I believe that the FGN chose the path of least resistance in order to avoid a long drawn out legal battle with the NMA were it to proscribe the NMA. But no serious government should be seen to resort to this course of action – training time must be protected. This is a bad precedence, and we cannot have a situation where the government sacks doctors in training every time it has an industrial disagreement with them in the future.

CONCLUSION:
I will repeat my old advice here: this crisis can only be resolved if all three parties sit together and discuss every contentious issue. It is senseless to keep repeating the same action if a different reaction is desired.
 
Over the last decade or two, the NMA and non-medical health workers (more recently represented by JOHESU) have taken turns to go on strikes. It’s pointless for the government to enter into agreements with one party knowing fully well that the other party will go on strike to demand for a reversal of those agreements.
 
[story_link align="left"]34350[/story_link]I call on the NMA to suspend the strike in the interest of public health. The government must reverse the suspension of residency programme immediately. It must also sit with JOHESU and NMA in a roundtable conference as a matter of urgency.

Ijabla Raymond, a medical doctor of Nigerian heritage, writes from the UK. 
Contact: [email protected]