Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Kogi state chapter, on Friday disclosed that a total of 79 doctors had left Kogi Civil Service in the last one year as a result of poor condition of service.
Its state chairman, Dr Kabiru Zubair, who stated this at a conference in Lokoja to mark this year’s NMA’s Physicians’ Week, themed: “Universal Health Coverage: Leaving No One Behind,” added that in the last nine months, 27 doctors, including two consultants, had resigned from the Kogi State Specialist Hospital (KSSH), Lokoja.
He added that 44 doctors had resigned from the state’s Hospitals Management Board (HMB) and eight from the Kogi State University Teaching Hospital, Anyigba.
The NMA Chairman lamented that the welfare of its members in the last one year has nose-dived, due to poor remuneration, poor working conditions, and lack of healthcare infrastructure, adding that loss of purchasing power of the naira has resulted into mass migration of doctors to greener pastures and the resultant brain drain in Nigeria Health Sector.
“The situation of doctors is very pathetic in Kogi Civil Service, starting from under-payment, irregular payments to outright non-payment of salaries for over five months consecutively and counting.
“Yet, our doctors and other healthcare workers kept on providing healthcare services on empty stomach at great risk to our families and professional calling. Currently, there is apathy and despondence in the health work force in the state,” he said.
Continuing, he said: “More doctors are just waiting for the next available opportunity to leave. The consequences are worsening healthcare indices in the state. The vacuum created will ultimately be filled by medical quacks to the detriment of our people and no level of policing can stop it.
“We call on the state government to prioritise the salary payment of
healthcare workers to abate the current low morale and untold hardship
in the health work force.”
