The indefinite strike embarked on by doctors in Ekiti State has paralysed activities in public hospitals, as patients have been evacuated to seek treatment in private hospitals.
It was gathered that doctors in the 19 general hospitals, three specialist hospitals and 100 health care centres vowed that the strike would continue as long as the government was unwilling to meet their demands.
The doctors, under the auspices of the National Association of Government General Medical and Dental Practitioners (NAGGMD), on June 30 withdrew their services, after exhausting 28 days ultimatum issued to the government, in protest against alleged wage disparity, unpaid backlog of allowances, among others.
Our reporter, who visited General Adeyinka Adebayo Hospital in Iyin-Ekiti and the State Specialist Hospital in Ikere-Ekiti observed that activities in the hospitals were crippled, as doctors shunned their duty posts.
Many offices in the hospitals were locked and patients stranded because there were no doctors to attend to them.
While outpatients were seated outside waiting in anticipation that nurses and other health professionals, who are yet to join the strike, would attend to them, patients on admission were evacuated by their relatives to seek treatment in private hospitals.
A relation of one of the patients, who spoke with our reporter, said the inability of the sick to access treatment in the hospital had brought hardship on patients.
She said her sibling was taken away from the hospital to seek treatment in a private hospital because the absence of doctors had affected health service delivery in the hospital.
She urged the government to accede to the demands of the doctors, to bring succour to thousands of ill people who could not afford private hospitals.
The doctors had accused Governor Kayode Fayemi of being insensitive to the plight of health professionals, alleging neglect of the primary and secondary health system.
Addressing reporters yesterday on the strike, NAGGMDP Chairman Dr. Kolawole Adeniyi said the doctors were left with no option but to embark on the strike following government’s failure to respond to their demands.
He said efforts by the doctors to persuade the government to improve their welfare had not yielded result in the last 10 years.
Adeniyi said the recently-unveiled health insurance scheme by Governor Fayemi would achieve no result without a well-motivated personnel and adequately equipped facilities across the 16 local governments.
He said: “Ekiti State Government remains unperturbed about the germane and critical issues being raised. The government has refused to commit itself to the protection of health care professionals, at a time when nations and civilisations are offering support to this cadre of workers, more importantly in the face of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“We take this opportunity to appeal to the citizens to join us in the appeal to the government to heed our demand to safeguard the health matrix in our state, which is on the brink of collapse.”
Adeniyi called for the implementation of their demands aimed at improving their welfare so that they could deliver optimal services to the people.
