Medical doctors in Nigeria, under the umbrella of Medical Association of Nigeria (NMA) have frowned at move by the federal government to harmonize salaries of health workers in the country.
A communiqué issued today, Sunday, by the NMA President, Dr. Mike Ogirima, at the end of its 57th Annual General Meeting and Delegate Conference in Calabar, said: “what we are against is the fact that everybody cannot be equated to be equal. In the animal kingdom, all animals are equal; but some are more equal than others.”
The communiqués said that although health workers face many hazards in the discharge of their duties but that their output cannot be compared to doctors who performed the bulk of the medical services.
“There is an attempt to harmonize the salaries and the Federal Ministry of Health is at the lead of that attempt, which is currently causing a lot of disharmony in the health sector.
“Medical doctors are highly skilled and few in the country; the cut-off mark for medical students now is 280 and above. Everybody wants to accept that title of doctor in the medical set up; we are not against that.”
The association said that it is not against moves to enhance the welfare of other health workers, but insisted that relativity should be maintained.
“We are not saying that the welfare of other medical workers should not be taken care of, but that relativity should be maintained when we talk of salaries of health workers in the hospitals.
“The NMA is calling on government to evaluate different professionals in the health sector and audit the output they put at work.
“With that, there will be more objective data and statistics to buttress our point, asking for maintenance of the relativity.”
The doctors lamented the deteriorating state of infrastructures in public health institutions across the country and called on governments at all levels, to place premium on developing the sector.
They called on the federal government to be proactive by having a strong rapid emergency response team to handle outbreak of diseases, just as it stressed the need to resume local production of vaccines in the country.
The NMA condemned the poor handling of the outbreak of Cerebral Spinal Meningitis in many states across the country.
The NMA also ratified the adoption of the association’s seal/stamp for medical practitioners to check quackery in the profession.
NAN. [myad]
