PORTO NOVO (BENIN) A Surgical Oncologist, Prof. Charles Adisa, has urged Federal and state governments to adopt a uniformed approach in solving the nation’s health sector challenges.
Adisa, a professor at the Abia State University Teaching Hospital, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Porto Novo, Benin Republic.
He spoke on the sideline of a vacation at Songhai Farms in Republic of Benin.
According to him, some of the challenges in the nation’s health sector include, lack of a uniformed remuneration for health practitioners, infrastructural decay, lack of modern equipment, lack of training and inadequate funding.
He expressed regret that the immediate past Nigerian government didn’t address the problem squarely.
“A situation where you introduce what we call divide and rule; you negotiate with this group within the same sector, this group gets some perks and allowances.
“The other groups say what, this people have gotten this, then I have to get something higher, then everybody starts to scramble for perks and allowances.
“So, if you are going to negotiate with the labour union, it must be holistic, it must be a roundtable discussion with everybody where best practice is instituted.
“And that best practice will recognise what is the value of each professional group in the team work; who is the head, what are the supporting professionals and remuneration should also be classified according to that level.
“And there should be what we call relativity, if I increase your salary as a doctor by 10 per cent, I should also increase the salary of the person that is lower than you by that same percentage, so that the relativity is maintained.’’
“If I increase the salary of the doctor by 10 per cent, and I increase your own salary who is at the lower end by 50 per cent, eventually the man at the lower end will be earning more.’’
The don also advised the present government to invest in infrastructure and human capital.
“For example, as far back as 10 years ago, India already had 10 Davinci Robotic equipment used to do surgery, up till now Nigeria doesn’t have one.
“A Davinci Robotic just cost 1.5 million dollars; the state governors get about two, three billion naira as security votes alone.’’
Adisa said that most of the health challenges in the sector were at the primary level.
He urged government at all levels to increase investments in primary healthcare to overcome some of the health challenges like digestive disease and malnutrition.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
He cautioned all government owned health agencies and parastatals against wastage to ensure that the various interventions from both donor agencies and partners to the sector achieved the desired results.
(NAN)
You may also like:
