Meeting with health unions will end strikes, says minister

The Federal Government on Saturday said it had met with health associations to end the incessant strikes and rancour in the health sector.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Ali Pate, disclosed at a press briefing on the ministry’s agenda for the health sector.

He added, “We have got amazing doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists in Nigeria and people call them outside of the country all the time, but we need to make them visible so that we can be proud of them as professionals in our country.

“The human resource is the most important ingredient for producing health. We have met with stakeholders and we will work as a team and work better. The quality of what they deliver has to improve and hopefully, those who have gone away can begin to find their way back home. We will do more with our colleagues in the education ministry, the state government, and the private sector to expand the production of the health workforce that we are losing.

“On the issue of health workers’ strike is a major issue, ultimatums, strikes and rancor, underlying the rancour is a fundamental erosion of trust between various actors which has occurred for many years. As a government, between the labour ministry and ourselves, we got right into it and we have met with four of the professional associations, and all of those meetings were very constructive because they are all Nigerians, they all share the pain. There is no health worker that will be satisfied being trained to save life and sit at home watching people die.”

He stressed that the ministry had met with all the health workers associations. He added, “Some of the issues have been resolved while we were discussing with them because they have to do with the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, and some the Civil Service role, not necessarily the Ministry of Health The health workers will acknowledge that we should move to the phase where issues are less.”

The minister said the ministry would advocate for health spending and national health security would be prioritised, noting that the National Health Act would be implemented fully, including the Basic Health Care Provision Fund.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa, said the Federal Government would digitalise the healthcare system for better health outcomes.

He added, “We need to begin to make sure that the data we collect are accurate, and they are validated, they can be trusted, internationally and locally. Those data will be used to deliver care to our people. Once you have validated data that you can trust, you can begin to see the indices where you are getting better, where you are doing well, and where you are not doing well. Then you can recheck your interventions to improve those outcomes.

“We have a lot of research institutions. Everybody is working independently. We will rejig our research institutions, make them work collaboratively and get them to do what they are meant to do. We have a lot of professors in the academia who are struggling; they are just by themselves, no resources to support their research projects.

“As a professor, less than 50 per cent of your work should just be teaching students in classrooms; it’s a lifelong dedication to research.

We will unleash our clinical research, translational research and basic research because we will put more money into research because as we do more research, we will begin to be self-dependent. So, we will be really moving our research system into a more robust, focused and directional platform.”