Health Minister Urges Doctors To Call Off Strike And Save Lives

The minister for health, Osagie Ehanire, has asked the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to show empathy and call off it’s strike saying it may lead to loss of lives.

The resident doctors began an indefinite strike on Monday after the 14-day ultimatum given to the federal government expired.

NARD listed non-payment of allowances and inadequate supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as part of reasons for embarking on the industrial action.

But the minister on Monday, while responding to questions during the Presidential Tasks Force on Covid-19 briefing said the industrial action may lead to loss of lives..

He urged the doctors to show empathy by calling off the strike.

“Today we had a meeting with the House Committee Chairman on Health. NARD were also in attendance. At that meeting, they had not yet declared their position on the strike.

“I also did request that this is not the time to go on strike; not when we have a very difficult situation on our hands.

“I requested them to show enough empathy to know that we will continue to work on their demands and they should not down their tools because the lives that may be lost in that process are not replaceable,” he said.

Noting that some of the demands were not new , Ehanire assured that they would all be attended to.

“But we are very certain that the issues that were raised will be attended to, even though some of them are not very new and some of them date back to few years ago.

“Some of them have nothing to do with COVID-19, but have to do with residency training programmes. They are all being attended to. There are series of demands and some of them are not current,” he said.