AFTER FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA PLANS TO EQUATE DOCTORSWITH NURSES; NMA REACTS, SAYS NO TO MOVE

AFTER FG PLANS TO EQUATE FOCS TO NURSES IN SALARY; NMA RELEASES THIS

The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has called on
the Federal Government to shelve its planned
harmonisation of salaries of health workers in the
country.

Premium times reported that The association’s position is contained in a
communiqué issued by Mike Ogirima, President of
NMA, on Sunday at the end of the 57th Annual
General Meeting and Delegate Conference of the
association, held in Calabar, from April 24 to 29.

It noted that although health workers faced many
hazards in the discharge of their duties, their output
could not be compared to doctors who performed the
bulk of the medical services.
“There is an attempt to harmonise 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.

“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,” it said.

The association said that it was 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,” it added.
The communiqué also 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.
It 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.
On the outbreak of Cerebral Spinal Meningitis across
the country, the NMA condemned the poor handling
of the outbreak of the disease in some states.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the NMA
also ratified the adoption of the association’s seal/
stamp for medical practitioners to check quackery in
the profession.