Medical Doctors Not On Strike -NMA

The Secretary of Ni
geria Medical Association (NMA), Enugu State and South East caucus, Dr  Tony Onyia, said last Friday that medical doctors were not part of the strike by some health workers.
Onyia said in Enugu that it was the allied health professionals, and their support staff that were  on strike, among whom were the pharmacists, the nurses and laboratory scientists. “We are not  on strike, medical doctors are not on strike, we are working,” he said.
He said that if allied health workers had gone on strike because of their welfare or remuneration,  the doctors would have probably sympathised with them.
The secretary said they went on strike because they did not want only the doctors to head  hospitals, departments and hold the post of minister of health.
Onyia said the allied health professionals wanted to come above the doctors and probably to  relegate the doctors to the background.
“Tracing back to the history of medicine, doctors were the ones basically doing everything but  that when they saw that work was too much, they employed the services of the allied health  professionals,” he said.
He said the allied workers felt they could get their ways by crippling the health system, adding  that the doctors thought otherwise.
Onyia said the doctors had been mobilised to do their work and that of the allied health workers  to save lives.