AN URGENT CALL
..It was with heavy heart I watched the patient relatives wheel their ailing dad outside of the hospital. They have to leave to seek for care in any other hospital as the JOHESU strike had just kicked off. Today while passing through the emergency, i was stopped by a distressed woman, she pointed to a frail looking man with bandage on his head; her husband. He had an accident recently and was attended to in this hospital, after being rejected by another govt hospital. Now they have brought him for his follow up visit and are told to go to a govt hospital, apparently that was the hospital that rejected him. They look so confused.
I took a stroll to the Accident and Emergency ward and met empty beds. The once busy A and E was now a shadow of itself. Some patient's who requested for discharge in view of the JOHESU strike said the hospitals are now smelling because no cleaners to clean...
Cases booked for surgeries I heard were cancelled and i wonder what will become of pregnant women in dire need of emergency specialist attention who can't afford private hospitals.
Obviously, though the medical doctors are not on strike and are at work, the strike is taking it's toll on the INNOCENT masses and surely there will be casualties. I mean people will loose their lives due to lack of appropriate emergency intervention or poor service procured from less competent places. Therefore, whatever is causing this health worker strike should be dealt with once and for all.
WHAT is JOHESU ?
It means Joint Health Sector Workers Union. It includes every single staff working in the hospital apart from the doctors; from the cleaners to record staff, admin staff, dieticians, Nurses, Pharmacist, lab scientist, technicians, etc. For now their national body have called for a strike over some disagreement they have with the FG.
When two elephants fight, the ground (in this case the patients) suffers.
The doctors cannot work alone, so also the other health workers. Life has got no duplicate. Any life lost can't be gotten back. Let the public rise up to condemn this. incessant hospital strikes and demand for a permanent solution once and for all.
It's time for federal government of Nigeria to set the records straight by creating industrial harmony as it is obtainable in other parts of the world as standard practice.
Enough is Enough,let's stop playing with human lives!