Resident doctors threaten to down tools on Jan 12

The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) in Oyo State has threatened to indefinitely withdraw its services beginning Jan. 12, if the government fails to correct the anomalies and injustices in the health sector.

The resident doctors made this known on Thursday in Ogbomosho at a news conference jointly called by the branches of the association at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan and Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital (LTH), Ogbomoso.

The President of the UCH branch of the association, Dr Segun Olaopa, said every hospital in the state would be closed down if the necessary actions by government were not taken.

He said the association had always engaged the government constructively and had always employed legitimate means of championing its causes.

He stated that the association has dialogued with government over the years on the issues at stake without any meaningful progress.

“We are not surviving at all, but only mustering all energy at our disposal to save the lives of our people and patients.

“Any nation that toys with its health sector does not care about the health of its citizenry,” he said.

Dr Sebastine Oiwoh, the President, LTH branch of the association, appealed to the Chief Medical Directors of LTH and UCH as well as other stakeholders at both the federal and state levels to ensure that the anomalies and injustices were corrected.

“Access to health is poor; affordability is non-existent and acceptability is grossly lacking.

“The National Health Act that is supposed to resuscitate and salvage the poor health delivery system is yet to be implemented,’’ he said.

Oiwoh stated that the prevailing encumbrances and sheer neglect by state and federal governments has left the health of Nigerians far from normal.

He said the responsibility for funding of examinations, courses, foreign postings and dissertation, among others, had been left for resident doctors to shoulder.

“This is by far against the ethics and blueprint guiding our residency training,’’ he said.

He also decried the poor remuneration and backlog of salaries owed members, saying it was was unfair and unacceptable.

He said that members of the association from LTH Ogbomoso received only three and half months’ salaries in 2016, while their counterparts at UCH were yet to receive their Nov. and Dec. 2016 salaries.

According to him, the Oyo government owes LTH Ogbomoso resident doctors eight and half months’ salaries.

“We state that repeated victimisation and intimidation of our members through the brandishing of the `no-work no-pay threat’, is totally unacceptable,” he said.