Health Workers in Nigeria Begin Indefinite Strike

Posted on by Newswatchnigeria
  • PATIENTS GROAN IN PAINS

Catherine Oluwatoyin Ojo at work with her patients. Catherine works in Northern Nigeria. She is chief nursing officer at the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital. She qualified as a midwife in 1983, a fellow of the West African College of Nursing with specialty training in family planning, paediatric nursing, and administration. Some years ago Catherine cared for a preterm baby who nearly died many times, and because of this, she started the SCBU. Catherine trains others for essential newborn care, resuscitation, Kangaroo Mother Care, Community Based Newborn Care, and PMTCT of HIV. She is involved in several research studies to improve newborn care. Catherine is a winner of the Save the Childrenâs EVERY ONE Midwife Award 2011.

what is the fate of the patients at the government owned hospitals in Nigeria? This question came to mind has Health workers across the country under the aegis of the Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP) on Monday declared an indefinite strike following alleged government’s insensitivity to their plights.

The strike has been planned to paralyze any form of care for patients at any federal or state government owned hospital across the country.

Already, with the declaration of the strike, patients at the University College Hospital (UCH) have started groaning on the pains and hardship the strike would bring to the sick ones who were admitted in the hospital.

The aggrieved health workers said since the 2009 pact reached with the government, nothing has been done by the government to implement the agreement.

NUAHP is made up of physiotherapists, dietitians, medical laboratory scientists, radiographers, optometrists, pharmacists, dental therapists, dental technologists, medical physicists, health information officers, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists and medical social workers and others.

Addressing journalists at a press conference held at UCH on Monday, the National President of NUAHP, Dr. Ogbonna Obinna Chimeola, maintained that “the indefinite strike action which kicked off at 12:00 a.m. on Monday had become inevitable as the Federal Government had neither seen any reason to address the issues in contention positively nor communicate to the union the resolutions of the high-powered meeting held last month at the instance of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).”

“The union had waited patiently and had shown enough restraints and had exhausted all other industrial means because of the poor Nigerian masses who will suffer when we withdraw our services from the health facilities nationwide.

We have been pushed to the wall and this strike is inevitable,” the NUAHP president said.

Related posts