Nurses decry neglect, health workers task Fashola on wages

THE National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) has condemned what it described as government’s marginalization of the nursing profession.

The association also identified corruption as the major cause of maternal deaths in the country.  Poverty, negative cultural practices, anaemia were also included as reasons women die while giving birth.

Besides, health workers at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) yesterday urged Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola to correct what they called anomaly in the implementation of the Consolidated Health Salary Scale-(CONHESS) in the state.

The workers’ call came as the state’s newly employed doctors started operating in what was considered as an environment of fear.

Addressing the media at the International Nurses Day (IND) yesterday in Abuja, deputy national president, NANNM, R Tonade said that lack of adequate health facilities, insufficient welfare for nurses and midwives added to increase in maternal deaths.

He said the theme “Closing the gap from evidence to action” was a plea to nurses to use evidence-based approaches to nursing services for their patients and communities.

“Evidence-based practice is almost an impossibility for health professionals due to poor access to information, lack of electricity, absence of internet facilities in our hospitals.”

Others he said included absence of tele-medicine, lack of data bank, poor documentation, lack of specialised training for health professionals and poor funding of health care services.

“Yes, we are marginalized. We are not involved in policy formulation and implementation by government.”

He said that though the Federal Ministry of Health had finally appointed a director of nursing services,  “one person is not enough” to represent the nurses’ interest.

According to the National President, NANNM, Hussaini Dautsinma ,  the IND uses  May 12  to celebrate globally the life and times of the legendary Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing.

Dautsinma said that “nursing research is needed to generate new knowledge and advance nursing science, evaluate practice and services and provide evidence that will inform nursing education, practice, research and management.”

When The Guardian visited LASUTH, it was difficult to tell whether the doctors had resumed duty.   None of the doctors, who were expected to fill the vacuum created by the sacked 787 doctors in the state, were seen donning the doctors’ usual coat as most of them were in mufti.

Their action could have been as a result of the threat issued by the National Medical Association (NMA) which had threatened to deal with any doctor, who would take the offer from the Lagos State government to replace their sacked colleagues.

LASUTH staff confirmed that though the doctors had resumed, the hospital was not admitting new patients. Some of LASUTH workers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the doctors had been attending to minor cases of  few patients left behind by the strike.

“They (the doctors) have been attending to patients who had been admitted before the strike. Their work is to prescribe drugs and attend to minor cases like injury. They cannot attend to serious cases. Those who are supposed to attend to serious cases are those who are currently on strike,” a nurse in the hospital told The Guardian.

While holding state congress on Tuesday at LASUTH Surgical Out Patient Department the health workers said they had been short-changed in the implementation of CONHESS.

Nurses, medical laboratory scientists, medical record officers, facilitators, and pharmacists among other health workers attended the congress.                  Tuesday’s congress was second in five days held by the health workers to demand proper implementation of CONHESS.

The Chairman of LASUTH Workers Forum and National Auditor of Medical and Health Worker Union, Mr. Rashid Adebayo Bamishe, said the CONHESS as being implemented by the Lagos State government had moved health workers in the state backward by 15 years. He explained that the anomaly, if left uncorrected, would affect both their salaries and gratuities.

Bamishe said the case of health workers in the state was more complex than that of their doctor counterparts currently on strike to protest alleged poor implementation of  the Consolidated Medical Salary Scale  (CONMESS).

Bamishe, however, assured that health workers in the state would do everything humanly possible to ensure that healthcare was not grounded in the state, even in the fight to correct the CONHESS, which he said the workers had alerted government since the beginning of the year.

Some other health workers, however, called for forceful means to ensure that no stone was left unturned in the bid to correct the anomaly.

Bakare Babatunde said there was no need to engage the government if the association was not fully ready to fight the issue of CONHESS and high taxation among health workers in the state.