Dr. Yakub Mohammed NMA Chairman
Sam Kaye
48 doctors are reported to have been badly affected by the last flood which occured in Maiduguri Metropolis and in some parts of Jere council areas of Borno state.
These practicing doctors and members of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) were completely displaced with their families from their homes by the raging waters from the Alau dam such that some of them had to seek for solace elsewhere until the water went down.
Most of them who were displaced were magnanimous enough to render humanitarian services within the 36 camps recreated for internally displaced people (IDPs) from the sudden flood.
Chairman of the NMA Dr Yakub Mohammed gave this hint recently during an exclusive interview with this reporter on the celebration of the world physicians day at the NMA Secretariat in Maiduguri.
Dr Yakub said that the NMA executive did their best in ensuring that they visited the affected doctors who fled their homes away from the flood waters and empathized with all of them individually
“As a matter of fact, we have bylaws which we invoked to give them all the support they needed to make them fall in line with our standards of provision of welfare for our members.
” Incidentally most of them who found themselves attending to patients in IDP camps were equally involved in the provision of services to the entire populace which were affected by the sudden surge of water from Alau dam.
“This meant we had to activate our humanity support system for other flood affected residents too to be involved in instant outreach services to hundreds of residents in various camps that needed medical care.
“We even made sure that hot meals were cooked for the idps numbering over 400 for the first one week of the flood. And that went a long way to help people out of despair.” Said the chairman.
The Chairman noted that the annual physician week is set aside by the United Nations to celebrate doctors and understand their contemporary challenges even as they proffer solutions to some of them.
Speaking on the peculiar challenges affecting his members, the Chairman regretted that brain drain is one glaring problem which occurs as a result of the lingering disparity between practitioners in the country and others outside who work in much more conducive environments.
“Brain drain is our major problem in this part of the country. We have just about 800 doctors providing services to people in the entire state and you know what that means. It puts a stress on individual doctors who do the jobs of many.
” This is what results into burn out syndrome which in most circumstances is a very strong factor responsible for the state government loosing many doctors to other states and the federal with more personnel and remuneration.
“Health care professionals should be paid across board because health is not on the exclusive list in terms of remuneration. So in response to your question, we would be glad if the federal government can take over the payments of remuneration of doctors as they have done in the judiciary to ensure sanity and stability.
” The State govt is loosing lots of medical doctors yearly and this is worrisome to us because one doctor is left to cater for hundreds of patients in a day and you know what that means to the mental state of that practitioner. That is the only way to mitigate the problem.” He stressed.
On arrears for his colleagues, Yakub said that the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) was revised and implemented from January this year but they are yet to see the corresponding response to this directive on their pay slips.
No doctor however lost his life to the flood which came about as a result of the sudden collapse of the Alau dam 25km away which emptied itself into the city centre destroying the homes of over 200,000 people.
Highlights of the celebration of the week was a visitation to orphanages by the doctors in Borno state.
(www.krestnews. com)