NIGERIA
Contents 02 News in brief
2012 National Safe Motherhood Day Seminar
Why accountability in maternal and newborn health in Nigeria?
Dr Osahon Enabulele elected NMA President
Biography of Prof Umaru Shehu launched First national Malaria Programme Review
Dr Pate hosts inaugural private sector summit Felix Obi
06 The con versus the mess: lessons from the last Lagos State doctors’ strike Dr Olufemi Omololulu
The Nigeria Africa Health pages are coordi- nated by the editorial board members listed below. Suggestions for articles, news stories, or letters are welcome and should be submit- ted directly to them. If you wish to comment on the core journal, communicate to the UK address listed on the main contents page. Distribution is free, and by hand. If you wish to be sure of receiving a copy for either yourself or your institution, please subscribe. See page 3 of the main journal for details for Naira subscriptions.
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Do you have an opinion to air? Write to the Editors at:
ahnigeria@fsg.co.uk
Editors Dr Tarry Asoka
Medical Doctor and Health Management Consultant. Based in Port Harcourt Email:
tarry@carenet.info
Prof Shima Gyoh Dept of Surgery, Benue State University, Makurdi, and ex Chair of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN).
Email:
shimagyoh@gmail.com Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu
Consultant Medical Epidemiologist who also blogs on Nigerian health issues at
www.nigeriahealthwatch.com Email:
chikwe@nigeriahealthwatch.com
Felix Obi
Physiotherapist and Health Policy and Management Consultant who lives and works in Abuja Email:
halal3k@yahoo.com
Is it ethical for doctors to go on
strike? Strikes are a trade-union weapon which workers use to compel their employers to do their bidding – usually pay them higher salaries. Workers in a car factory, for example, claiming that their wages are no longer sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of living, will force their employer to make a choice of either increasing their wages or losing heavily when the strike stops car production. This might constitute a big problem to the employer but would have a negligible largely surmountable disadvantage to third parties, i.e. the public.
Some strikes, apart from inconveniencing the second party, hold third parties to ransom. If railway workers or bus drivers go on strike, not only would their employer suffer financial loss, but, this time, members of the public are greatly inconvenienced. The workers regard this as an effective additional pressure in their favour. The strikes of teachers and university lecturers however, do little direct harm to the employers. Third parties, the students, are the pawn whose lives are messed up. Frequent and prolonged strikes in the education and health sectors, such as we have in Nigeria could never be tolerated in developed countries. Education and health are the major instruments of national development and progress and any government that mishandles them would be readily voted out of power. The strike by health workers is the worst in the business of negotiating for higher wages, for the pawn is the public, with human lives and limbs as the bargaining chips. Under normal circumstances, the noble part of human behaviour requires us to do anything to save the lives of anyone in danger of dying. This instinct is strongest within the nuclear family where a mother who cannot swim will plunge into a deep river to save her child that has just fallen in. This instinct gets weaker as one moves out of the nuclear family to the tribe and the wider public. However, many human beings are still endowed with strong noble natures and the instinct to save life remains strong outside the in-group. At its best, it engulfs all human beings and includes even animals. It is considered shocking for any human being to walk away from a dying man without stopping to help. This is regardless of whether you are a health worker or not. Every year, even in Nigeria, many lives are saved by good people who stop at the scene of traffic accidents and offer what help they can give, often conveying the injured to hospital without expecting any reward for their humanitarian assistance.
It is easy to understand why the public find it difficult to support
a strike by doctors no matter how sympathetic they are to the doctors’ complaints. Strikes by doctors go against the grain of professional vocation. Some people remind them of the Hippocratic Oath, but the oath has no legal force. Oaths taken at primitive alters and shrines are probably more effective. Many medical colleges abroad have abandoned oath-taking at graduation. However, the ethics of medical practice forbid a doctor abandoning
Continued on page 2 July 2012 Africa Health Nigeria 1
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