The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, a respected senior member of the bar, a noble profession akin to medicine and priesthood, has recently demonstrated to the whole world how not to deal with professionals involved in providing holistic care for the weak and the vulnerable in the society. The recent mass dismissal of 788 junior and senior doctors in the health services of Lagos State shows an inherent utter contempt for the medical profession and its practitioners.
With this move, those whom the Governor sacked in a draconian fashion, even unheard of during the notorious regime of Gen. Sani Abacha include medical officers in General Hospitals; workers at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital including some consultants, registrars and senior registrars in various specialties such as Internal Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology amongst others. They have acquired sufficient skills and experience during their several years of training and service.
As a member of the Nigerian Medical Association, the incessant strikes in the health sector and by extension, our ivory towers, are a serious cause of concern to me, as it is to all Nigerians. The cost of each industrial action, be it in any form, is monumental. Many lives are lost and the economy within those health institutions and their environs is virtually paralysed. In such situations, nobody is happy. Our certificates are earned to save lives and put smiles on the faces of afflicted and their relations. I strongly believe strike should be the very last option, only employed when all other veritable means of conflict resolution have been explored and failed. In the case at hand, what manner of responsible and responsive government in a democracy will send the Rapid Response Squad into hospital premises to disrupt a peaceful congress being held by the doctors?
At the moment, the state of health situation in the whole country is worrisome. Our health indicators and statistics are abysmal. Life expectancy at birth of our men and women falls below 50 years. Doctor to population ratio is 3 per 10,000 compared to the United States which stands at 26 per 10,000. Brain drain is one significant factor largely attributed to this wide disparity. The 1993 United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report indicated that more than 21,000 Nigerian doctors were practising in the US alone, while Nigeria suffers from a shortage of doctors! One could only imagine how many other Nigerian-trained doctors are currently plying their trades in the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and other developed countries. Is anybody wondering why these professionals abandoned the ‘under-doctored’, disease burdened developing countries like Nigeria for some of those countries mentioned above? It is primarily as a result of our poor state of health facilities and poor working conditions, a clear example of which Fashola recently showed the whole world!
Also, it is shameful and rather embarrassing that the governor would come on air to give the figures of how much he is paying his doctors (majority of them working in far less than optimal hospital settings), when states like Ekiti and many others in the country with meagre resources pay their doctors the same salary structure without rancour.
At this juncture, it is crucial we bear in mind those who suffer the consequences of this apparent high-handedness of the Fashola led- administration. They are the poor Lagosians who will not be able to afford the exorbitant charges in those private hospitals in Lagos (most of which are ill-equipped and poorly staffed) or take their sick relations for treatment abroad.
It is high time well-meaning Nigerians and members of the Lagos State House of Assembly, who perhaps have the interest of the poor masses at heart, impressed it on Fashola, to rescind his ill-advised, clearly irrational decision and engage those aggrieved medics working with the state government in fruitful negotiations.
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