NUAHP Wants Law To Debar Public Servants From Medical Tourism Sponsorship

THE newly elected President of the Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP), Dr Obinna Ogbonna, has canvassed a halt to government’s sponsorship of medical trips abroad of some public office holders in the country.

Ogbonna, at the maiden investiture ceremony of NUAHP yesterday in Ilorin, said the appeal if adhered to would boost the health facilities in the nation’s hospitals.

He said the nation was not lacking seasoned medical personnel, adding that if policy formulators are disallowed from assessing medical help abroad, they would be forced to formulate policies in favour of adequate provisions of facilities in the hospitals. “Hard earned public funds should no longer be used to sponsor public office holders abroad each time they fall sick.

If the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari can allow a law to that effect, I think it would be good for our health system in Nigeria. “What they mainly go abroad to do is nothing but medical tourism.

We have the capabilities here to solve most of the health challenges, but sometimes lack of state of the arts equipment is usually the problem.

If this is stopped, we believe many policies will tilt towards the need to adequately equip our hospitals for the benefits of us all”, he said. Ogbonna, who lamented the obstacles placed on all his members preventing them from getting to the pinnacle of their career, called for stakeholder’s summit among health professionals to address the marginalisation and favouritism among health workers.

When we go to government to for collective bargaining, the implementation of such collectively bargained agreements are jettisoned.

For instance in 2009, we had a collective bargained agreement with the government, till now we are still having issues on the implementation.

Even the National Industrial Court (NIC) judgment of July 23, 2013 where our members were asked to skip from CONHESS 9 to 11 is still a tug of war. The arrears of that skipping have not been paid.

This is generating a lot of animosity, and no body will want to work in such an environment.  “Until stakeholders meeting is called where all of us will come together, look at issues, their merits and demerits and government will take a stand as a good father and give justice to all of us, we will be having recurrent strikes.”