Health workers’ strike’ll not affect operations —UCH

The management of the University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan, yesterday said healthcare services had been going on in the hospital without any hindrance, despite the on-going strike declared by the Nigeria Union of Allied Health Professionals, NUAHP.

It would be recalled that the National President of Nigeria Union of Allied Health Professionals, NUAHP, Comrade Felix Faniran, had last week declared an indefinite strike in all the nation’s teaching hospitals, and ordered members to withdraw their services.

But the UCH spokesperson, Mr. Ayodeji Bobade, in a chat with journalists, said in and out patients had been receiving medical attention from doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers, and that the operations of the hospital, smooth.

He said: “All the patients in the hospital are receiving medical attention. It is not true that patients are forcefully discharged because of the on-going strike.

“It is only one union that is on strike; that is the physiotherapists, medical laboratory scientists, radiographers, and a few others.

The doctors, nurses, and administrative staff are not on strike. So, I can assure you that this has not affected operations in the hospital at all.”

But the national president of the striking health workers, who hinted that the union held a peace meeting with the minister of health last week, stated that if the strike continued till the end of the month, other four unions in the health sector would join the strike.

He said the meeting with the health minister had not yielded any meaningful result, and that there was no end in sight regarding the strike. During a visit to the emergency ward of the hospital yesterday, doctors and nurses were seen attending to patients.

However, some of the patients said they were not able to get most of the tests they were asked to do in the hospital, as a result of the strike.

“I have been lying down here since Friday without the doctors attending to my case because I could not run these tests which the doctors asked me to run.

“When we got to the medical laboratory scientists to conduct the tests, we were turned back because of the strike. “One of them even told me that he will run the tests, but secretly, since he would not want others to know that he was violating the strike order, but up till now, we could not find him.

“As you can see, most of us here are really frustrated because we cannot go ahead with our treatment without these tests,” one of the patients who would not want his name mentioned, said.

The grievances of the health workers include non-commencement of residency training programme for health professionals, non-implementation of new call duty allowance and non-payment of arrears of CONHESS 10, among others.

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