Metro
Covid-19: ‘Health Care Providers Need Insurance Policy’
With the lives of medical practitioners and other health care providers mostly on the line as a result of Covid-19 pandemic and other infectious diseases, experts have called for a sustainable health insurance policy that will cater for the welfare of health workers.
A Medical Doctor and current President of the Association of Residents Doctors,(ARD) in the Rivers State University Teaching Hospital, RSUTH, Dr George Mathew Ela, who spoke with Port Harcourt Metro in an interview, said such a policy should be an upward review of the paltry hazards allowance of N5000 currently paid to health workers.
Describing health workers as most vulnerable to Covid-19 and other infectious diseases like tuberculosis and Lasa Fever, he pointed out that the initiatives would be good incentives and motivation to the health workers.
Dr Ela who is also a Senior Registrar in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at RSUTH, said one the greatest challenges posed to medical practice was that most patients lied about their actual health status during interviews, and placed doctors at the risk of contacting infectious diseases.
“ Most patients who come to the hospital do not disclose the real information about their state of health because of fear of stigmatisation or exposure. This is very wrong. We have lost most of our colleagues because of this, when patients give the correct information, it helps Doctors to deal with the specific health challenge, it also helps us to take precautionary measures to protect us from infectious diseases.
Dr Ela also called for the implementation of the Medical Residency Training Act of 2017, which was assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018.
He said the implementation of the act, as a roadmap for residency training would enhance manpower development in the medical profession, as well as address the problems of capital flight as doctors were leaving the shores of the country to seek greener pastures abroad.
Dr Ela further hinted that, “security and other basic amenities should be provided at the grassroots to enable doctors at primary health care centres to enable them discharge their services effectively and tackle the health needs of the rural people”
“We are lucky in Rivers State to have health centres spread across the State, but the challenge is that doctors at the Primary health have also becomevictims of kidnapping and other forms of harassment.”
By: Taneh Beemene