Seek alternative means to strikes, Okowa tells resident doctors
- Governor Ifeanyi Okowa wants Nigerian doctors to fight for their rights instead of resulting to strikes
- The governor said industrial strikes affect patients and put their lives in danger
- Okowa is himself a trained medical doctor before his foray into politics
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Delta state governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, has advised Nigerian doctors to explore other ways of getting government's attention to their needs instead of embarking on industrial strike.
Okowa who is a trained medical doctor himself gave the advice on Wednesday, September 23 when the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) led by its first vice president, Dr Julian Ojebo, visited him at Government House, Asaba.
He stated that doctors’ groups were not like other trade unions and must, therefore, exercise restraint in embarking on strike “because when doctors go on strike, the lives of people are in danger.’’
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His words:
“When doctors go on strike lives are lost and they can't be retrieved back when the strike is called off. Let us find a way to pile pressure on the government to attend to our issues rather than going on strike.”
Leader of the delegation, Ojebo, said they were in Asaba to invite the governor for their 40th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference holding at the Delta State University Teaching Hospital (DELSUTH), Oghara.
He lauded the governor for being a good ambassador of the medical profession, adding that NARD had unanimously agreed to confer on him a merit award.
At the event in DELSUTH on Thursday, September 24, Governor Okowa called for the adoption and implementation of a viable and sustainable healthcare financing programme for states in the country.
Okowa said that with an abysmal 0.5 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in public health spending, Nigeria had one of the lowest public healthcare financing globally.
He also advocated for a national policy on responding and managing unforeseen public health crises.
Two weeks ago, following a meeting and agreement reached with the federal government, the NARD suspended a planned nationwide industrial action.
The federal government and the doctors had on Wednesday, September 9, reached an agreement in a bid to end the industrial action.
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