AS the strike called by the Medical Guild, doctors under employment
of Lagos State Government enters its third day; the State government has
offered to pick up the bills of patients referred from its hospitals to
private hospitals.
To this end, the state government has identified some private
hospitals that could offer secondary care to serve as rescue centres for
patients in critical conditions who cannot be handled at the state
owned-hospitals due to the strike.
Two hospitals around Ikeja area of Lagos, Shepherd Medical Centre and
Unity Hospital, have been designated by the state government to treat
all referral cases from LASUTH.
Addressing journalists on services available at LASUTH, the Chief
Medical Director, Prof Adewale Oke, who said the decision of government
was to forestall loss of lives as a result of the industrial action,
however, confirmed that no life has been lost at the hospital since the
strike began.
His words: “The Ministry of Health has identified some private
hospitals all over Lagos for this rescue mission. But Unity Hospital and
Shepherd Medical Centre will handle referral cases from LASUTH and
Lagos State government will foot the bill.”
Oke noted that the rescue centres had become necessary because the
state-owned hospitals can no longer run full hospital services as a
result of the strike and skeletal services rendered by some consultants
was like a drop in the ocean.
Explaining the situation at LASUTH, he said: “Since the strike
started the hospital has made necessary arrangements to ensure that
emergency cases and patients in the wards are taken care of. What we
have done here is to ensure that emergency departments are running. We
have a fair coverage to ensure that no life was lost unnecessarily.”
Oke who said that at least two or more consultants (senior doctors)
were stationed in all the departments since the strike started, added:
“To sustain emergency services we posted some consultants to run the
Surgical Emergency unit, Paediatric Emergency unit, Out-patient
Emergency unit and other emergency units in the hospital. We hope that
by the end of the warning strike, dialogue between doctors and
government will yield results so as to prevent continuation of the
action.
“Doctors erred in execution of the strike by not following the labour
law by issuing the government at least 15 days notice before downing
tools. Government was only given a day notice before the action which is
not the procedure.”
Explaining the bone of contention, he said the Consolidated Medical
Salary Scale, CONMESS, which is the major issue for the strike, was
already being paid in Lagos at the same level with federal government,
“but we cannot implement it step by step across the levels because of
the large number of doctors in Lagos state employment.”
Speaking, Director of Clinical Services and Training, LASUTH, the Dr
Bode Ogunbanji, said that the biggest challenge Lagos State had in
implementing any salary structure including CONMESS was number of
doctors in its employment which he claimed was bigger than that of other
states.
On why there were no ward rounds yesterday, he said: “When you have
an emergency situation like this, you do not expect to have ward rounds,
if there is any emergency, the management team will be called to attend
to the cases that require emergency care. They will call me or any
other management staff to sort it out. Nothing like that happened
yesterday. You cannot run ward round in all the departments in
emergency to send a team of doctors to take care of the situation.”
On heavy presence of armed policemen, he said they were there to
prevent any eventuality and not to arrest anybody. However, a walk round
the hospitals, yesterday, revealed that the heavy presence of the
police witnessed on day one of the strike had disappeared. But patient
load has drastically reduced. Patients in Lagos have continued to face
hard times as many patients facing ill health conditions, which visited
public hospitals to seek health care were turned back from hospitals due
to the non availability of doctors to attend to them.
When Vanguard visited the Lagos State University Teaching
Hospitals (LASUTH), Ikeja, yesterday, only emergency cases requiring
urgent medical attention, were being attended to by a few consultant
doctors who were assisted by nurses and other medical workers.
Similarly, at the General Hospital Lagos, Isolo General Hospitals,
General Hospital, SuruLere, and others, the situation was the same, but
the large number of patients who used to swarm the hospitals was
drastically reduced.
Investigations revealed that the patients stayed away following the
news of the doctors’ strike. Many of the patients are now seeking
healthcare in private and Federal Government owned hospitals.-VANGUARD
No comments:
Post a Comment