Abia, evolving welfare strategies to check brain drain in health sector – Otti
……Assures NMA of support in hosting its national Physicians Week
From Boniface Okoro, Umuahia
Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has disclosed that his administration was instituting workers-friendly policies and welfare packages that would discourage brain drain in the state’s health sector.
Brain drain is prevalent among medical doctors in Nigeria as they have been leaving the country in droves because of issues of poor welfare, among others.
Otti disclosed this while addressing executive members of the Abia State chapter of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) who were on a working visit to him to intimate him of their national physicians week planned to hold in the state next month.
The Governor also said that his administration was prioritizing healthcare services in the state and assured that he would do everything possible to ensure that Abia State University Teaching Hospital, Aba (ABSUTH) would not lose any programme in their forthcoming accreditation exercise.
He said his administration would continue to place a premium on the welfare of workers, describing payment of salary as a basic responsibility of government.
Governor Otti assured that his administration was instituting workers-friendly policies and welfare packages that would discourage the issue of brain drain prevalent among medical Doctors across Nigeria.
He explained that his administration was prioritizing healthcare services as evident in the ongoing renovations and equipping of three out of the 15 General Hospitals and selected Health Centres among the 192 Health Centres in the 17 local government areas of the state.
He said the goal of the exercise was to achieve a minimum standard in all government healthcare facilities. He added that government was working with international healthcare agencies to standardize and make healthcare services better in the State.
While noting the ongoing efforts by his administration to optimize health facilities in the state, Governor Otti announced that the upgraded eye clinic in Umuahia would be reopened soon.
He explained that life was important, hence the government’s focus on the ongoing turn-around of health facilities, saying that his administration was desirous of making health facilities in the State to function optimally.
The Governor assured that his administration would provide necessary facilities and infrastructure to ensure that ABSUTH does not lose any of its programmes in the forthcoming accreditation exercise.
“We will do everything possible to support you for the place (ABSUTH) to function properly. We will partner with you to address all challenges facing the institution and tidy them up before the visitation panel comes for accreditation,” the Governor promised.
“You remember a few months before accreditation was withdrawn, I had written to the then Governor to warn of the impending de-accreditation which they responded with a nonchalant attitude and which later resulted in the eventual withdrawal of accreditation,” he recalled.
Recall that Mediciane and Surgery Programme of ABSUTH was de-accredited last year.
But the Governor pledged that government would partner the association in putting things in place to ensure that the lost course was recovered but that products of the institution were equipped with requisite training to be able to compete with their contemporaries across the globe.
The Governor commended the NMA for its planned free-medical outreach in Isialangwa South LGA, noting that the gesture would complement the ongoing state government’s free-medical exercise being carried out across the three senatorial zones of the State, which has been slated to last till December this year.
He promised to support the Abia NMA in hosting their forthcoming Physicians’ Week from October 22 – 28, 2023.
Earlier, the State Chairman NMA, Dr Isaiah Abali, had thanked Governor Otti for regularizing salaries of medical doctors, in addition to abolishing the dichotomy in Abia civil servants. “We want to thank our beloved Governor for the salaries of medical doctors already paid and for abolishing the dichotomous core and non-core civil Service,” Abali said.
He said that the pace of development in every facet of the State within Otti’s short time in office were testaments of a leader on a mission to rescue Abia from total collapse.
The State NMA Chairman, used the forum to invite the Governor as the Special Guest of Honour to the Physicians’ Week, a national programme of the NMA which Abia is hosting for the first time.
