Abel Leonard/ Lafia
The Chief Medical Director (CMD ) Dalhatu Araf specialist hospital Lafia, Nasarawa state, Dr. Ikrama Hassan, is calling on resident doctors to return back to normal service delivery and shelve their proposed strike.
Dr. Ikrama disclosed this to journalist, Sunday at a press conference in Lafia, assuring the general public that the hospital remained open and will continue to render services to the good people of Nasarawa state.
The medical Boss also added that he wants the general public to know that as a hospital, the patient is the most important person and it is he that the hospital seeks to serve.
He further stressed that “It is for this reason that we refused to oblige to the earlier demand of resident Doctors to shut down the hospital as against management’s advice of scaling down based on peculiarities of each individual department”.Abel
Reacting to the relationship existing between the resident doctors on one hand and their trainers, departments and management on the other hand, Dr. Ikrama said the management of DASH had convened a meeting of all association leaders in the hospital where arrangements, suggestions and modifications were made as the management was roundly commended for its actions, plans and for carrying all along.
“Association of Residents Doctors (ARD)’s suggestion for broad downscaling and/or shut down of services were discussed and generally not agreed to as that discretion was already given to departments in collaboration with the Hospital Rapid Response Team (RRT) and Infection Prevention and Control Committee( IPCC).
” Few days later, the Association of Residents Doctors ( ARD) asked its members to suspend clinical services except emergencies and also stopped academic activities.
“This was followed by a counter order from the Medical ‘and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) instructing its members to maintain services but suspend training while other unions and associations who were in the earlier meeting continued with services as agreed in the joint meeting,” ikrama said
The CMD also lamented that the experience from the first wave of covid-19 pandemic response showed that full scale shut down will result in much more avoidable deaths from other treatable emergencies than desired saying it is the most trying period for the hospital having to deal with rising rate of infection in the community, among its workforce and disruption of services.
He therefore call on the leadership of Resident Doctors to have a rethink in their action as it affects the total health care services in the state as it threatens to allow more deaths to arise in the state, adding hat the management have strengthen the workforce in the various departments by requesting all resident doctors on supernumerary postings to return in order to augment the workforce to maintain services to its staff as well as the good people of Nasarawa state.
The CMD also gave assurance of better welfare packages as the hospital have mobilised funds to implement agreement made to improve the robust plans whose primary aim is the protection of its staff.
