22nd March, 2011
Nurses compounded the problems in the health sector last week when they embarked on strike to protest government’s refusal to implement the Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS) for health services personnel in the nation’s hospitals. The strike by the nurses is coming on the heels of the strike embarked upon by the doctors in the state under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Guild.
The doctors embarked on the strike on 5 February to press home their demand for 100 percent implementation of the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure, CONMESS.
The strike by the health personnel has led to a total paralysis of health services in the nation’s hospitals. To fully understand the implications of this total paralysis, an incident occurred last Thursday at the Isolo General Hospital, Lagos when a pregnant woman died at the gate of the hospital after delivering her baby.
According to report, the pregnant woman was rushed from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Ikeja due to the doctors’ strike to the Isolo hospital but she met her fate when she was told that doctors and nurses at the hospital were also on strike. She was left unattended and she died at the gate of the hospital after delivery. Her baby, however, survived.
Also last Friday, an accident victim with blood covering his face was taken to LASUTH but there was nobody to attend to him and he was taken away for treatment elsewhere.
These incidents depict the grim situation in our hospitals today. The hospitals are virtually paralysed and patients are groaning. Patients on admission at the hospitals have been withdrawn by their relations and taken to private hospitals where they are made to pay through the nose. Those who cannot afford the exorbitant charges at the private clinics now resort to herbal centres with all the attendant risks.
Suddenly, homes of traditional herbalists are now brimming with patients who are given all kinds of dangerous concoctions to drink in order to ameliorate their sufferings. Minor ailments that could have been treated by the hospitals have now assumed dangerous dimensions, sometime taking the life of the sufferer.
It is high time the government and well meaning members of the society intervened in the ongoing strike embarked upon by the nurses and doctors. People are suffering and dying with nobody to take care of them in the hospitals.
It is pathetic that pregnant women who are supposed to be on ante natal care can no longer be attended to at the hospitals as a result of the strike by the medical personnel, so also are children and the aged ones. The consequence of this is that the maternal deaths are on the increase.
Government should not sit by and watch this continue. Leaders of the striking nurses and the doctors should be brought to the negotiating table where issues can be ironed out amicably.
We also appeal to the striking nurses and doctors to be reasonable in their demands and heed the appeal by government and members of the public to return to work.
Life is too precious to be toyed with. Doctors and nurses should remember that they are rendering essential services that have to do with preserving life and no amount of money can adequately compensate for their services. This is why we feel that they should take the interest of their patients into consideration in all their dialogue with government.