Patients in government hospitals across Ondo State have appealed to the striking doctors to consider their plight and return to their duty posts, as the industrial action embarked upon by the resident doctors entered the tenth day.
The patients who lamented about their predicament also appealed to the state government to respond to the demands of the striking doctors.
It was gathered that most of the patients who needed urgent medical attention have opted for private hospitals while many are still stranded unattended to at the public hospitals across the state.
Other health workers at the University of Medical Science (UNIMED) Teaching Hospital in Ondo, were seen discharging their duties while activities at the Federal Medical Centre FMC in Owo remained low.
Speaking, the Chief Medical Director of FMC, Dr Liyasu Adeagbo Ahmed, attributed the low rate of activities in the hospitals to the absence of the resident’s doctors in the hospital.
The state chairman of the Association of Resident Doctors, Dr Tope Olatilu said the strike would continue until their demands are met by the government.
One of the patients interviewed at the state general hospital Oluwakemi Opeyemi expressed disappointment with the system for allowing government doctors to go on strike for this long without attending to their demands.
She, however, appealed to doctors to consider the plights of the masses who can’t afford to go to the private hospitals and are now stranded across government hospitals in the state.
Opeyemi also enjoined the federal government to urgently meet the demands of the striking doctors and save the nations health sector from goal collapse.
The resident doctors in the state have embarked on indefinite strike action on June 5, 2021, two months before the national body of the association declared the nationwide strike, to press home their demands.
Some of the demands of the Ondo striking doctors include unpaid five months salaries, irregularities in salary payment, adoption of the Medical Residency Training Act of 2017, improved working condition among others.
The doctors, in a statement issued on Monday by the General Secretary of ARD UNIMEDTH, Dr John Mathew, called on the government to look into their matter and respond to their requests for the sake of the lives of the patients at the state hospitals and the health sector in general.
“The Ondo State hospitals have been operating at less than 10 per cent capacity for the most part of this year. This is occasioned by the non-payment of salaries, salary arrears, and irregularity of payments. It will surprise you to know that Ondo State doctors have only earned two months salaries so far, thereby leaving us impoverished with five months unpaid salaries.
“Our salaries are so irregular that the February salary which was paid in April came over 70 days after January salary. This situation has made it difficult for the Doctors, some of whom are in a residency training program that involves expensive Update courses and Exams.
“This is aside from the cost of research work he or she has to fund from the irregular and, now, unavailable meagre salary.
“This has not only brought untold hardship and worsened the welfare of the health workers who continued to combat the scourge of the covid 19 pandemic, to which some members have paid the ultimate price, with dampened morale but has also made life difficult for the people of the state who receive care in our public facilities as most of these people cannot afford the cost of private health care and have to travel to other states to access affordable healthcare that should be made available at home.”
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