Business
Abuja Hospitals Adopt Measures To Regularise Services
Some public hospitals in
Abuja have adopted ad hoc strategies to provide regular health services to cushion the effect of the ongoing nationwide strike by the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU).
Medical doctors in some public hospitals in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) disclosed this in separate interviews with newsmen in Abuja last Wednesday.
They said patients in most public health care centres in and around the city were still being provided with regular medical services despite the protracted strike.
Spokesperson of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in the FCT, Dr Akeem Lawal, said the National Hospital and some of the general hospitals in Abuja were still providing care for patients.
He said at the National Hospital, Abuja, corps members, undergraduate trainees on internship and some newly employed staff of the hospital had been deployed to assist in providing medical services.
“A hospital is not a place where you can just shut down the entire place and lock up the gates.
“There are interns and youth corps members working in most of the units. For instance, in the laboratories you will find out that the intern laboratory scientists are working because they can’t go on strike.
“What the National Hospital has done is that the new staff that were employed last year have resumed, they are not union members yet so they are working.
“There are nurses, lab scientists, physiotherapists and others, among them, so that is the way the national hospital is working, we are using corps members, interns and the employees who are not yet union members,” he said.
Lawal said the measures could have been adopted by the management of the hospital to ensure that the facilities were not shut down completely.
According to him, you need to know that in health care all aspects of care are important; you need a full complement of all services to achieve a comprehensive health care delivery.
Lawal said the doctors could also not afford to stop the treatment of cancer patients at the hospital as a result of the strike.a
The chairman said: “There some patients especially chemotherapy patients that are still on admission, their files are still with their doctors.