In an effort to put a stop to the ongoing strike, the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors and the Federal Government have signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
After a 14-day deadline for the government’s response elasped, NARD started a five-day warning strike on May 17 to emphasize its demands.
The doctors want a 200 percent increase above their existing gross salary, effective immediately, in the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure.
In addition, they demand the immediate removal of a law that would require recent medical and dental graduates to serve a five-year mandatory service requirement in Nigeria before receiving full licenses to practice.
The Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Health, as well as Dr. Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, attended a meeting with the doctors on Friday to discuss their requests.
The deadlines outlined in the MoU’s provisions will be decided by NARD’s National Executive Council, according to NARD.
The NARD President, Dr. Emeka Orji, told Punch on Saturday that they had discussed after hearing the government’s position and explaining it to them. We signed after they explained to us what they could do and what they couldn’t, along with the reasons why.
“So, we will take back what the government offered to the NEC to accept or reject it and give further directives. Part of the MoU is that NARD will call its NEC in the next 48 hours and brief them on the outcome for them to decide.”
Meanwhile, the strike, which commenced on Wednesday, continued on Saturday, with medical services hampered in federal hospitals across the country, with hospitals having to make adjustments to their schedules to accommodate as many patients as possible.
A News Agency of Nigeria correspondent, who visited Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, Abuja, found that patients were still being attended to.
Nurses were seen at their duty posts, while the various departments were also attending to patients as best as they could.
Speaking about the measures employed to cushion the effect of the absence of the resident doctors, the Head of Clinical Services, FMC, Jabi, Dr Joseph Eziechila, said though service delivery was not as it should be, the hospital would not shut down.
He added that the management had to think out of the box to keep the facility running.
Eziechila stated, “We had to think out of the box on how to maintain services. Resident doctors are the bedrock of healthcare delivery because they are more in number.
“Here, we have close to 100 consultants, but the resident doctors, youth corps members and others will number like 350; so, they are the main workforce.
“When patients visit the hospital, they are the first point of contact before you call the consultants if there are issues.
“However, what we did in this case is that we have some youth corps doctors and we still have a few locum doctors; we have house officers who are not part of the strike, and we have principal medical officers.
“So, as much as we can, we try to make use of these people to keep services and the emergencies running, as well as some other points of service delivery so that the hospital is not completely shut down.”
He said that the situation had caused the consultants to do some extra work.
Eziechila added, “Though it is a short strike, we have to mobilise all the consultants. In the outpatient clinic, we have to mobilise all the consultants to work outside their normal schedule.
“If you get there now, we have like four of the consultants at the same time; the consultants running specialist clinics also run their clinics on their own.
“Where it becomes a problem is if the strike is prolonged; but I had to call a meeting with the departments to appeal to them to go the extra mile for this very short time.”
Ezeichila, however, said that the hospital did not have an influx of patients as before, adding that news of the strike automatically reduced the high rate of hospital visits by patients.
A visit to Maitama District Hospital, Abuja, also revealed that patients were being attended to.
The number of patients has, however, reduced as only a handful was seen accessing care.
Some of the patients, who spoke to NAN on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised that doctors were on the ground to attend to them.
One of them also told NAN that the absence of patients in the hospital made services faster than usual.
Meanwhile, the NARD President has said the 200 per cent salary increase being demanded by resident doctors is not outrageous.
“Even with what Nigeria is getting now in form of revenue, the government should be able to improve this significantly and that was why we pegged it at 200 per cent increment in the CONMESS (Consolidated Medical Salary Structure),” he said in an interview with Sunday PUNCH.
While justifying the demand, especially with the government’s complaint that it had no money, Orji stated, “We are scientists and we do not base our discussion on rumours. We have said that for you to take us back to where we were in 2009, our studies have shown that taking into consideration the cost of living in 2009, the fuel price, the inflation rate and the exchange rate, it has to be increased to a minimum of 270 per cent.
“So, we are being considerate by bringing it down to 200 per cent. What you do during negotiations is that you present your facts, the government will present theirs and you will discuss. The government can come up with their data showing that they need to increase by a percentage different from ours and when we are convinced, then we will take it back to our members and we will discuss.”