Consultant doctors resume work at COOUTH, threaten total shutdown

Members of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital, Amaku, Awka branch, have returned to their duty posts after one week warning strike.
The association announced the resumption of duty in a notice signed by Dr Chukwudi Okani and Dr Obiora Ejiofor, its chairman and secretary respectively.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the consultant doctors entered the warning strike three weeks after the Association of Resident Doctors in the teaching hospital embarked on an indefinite strike.
The notice directed all members to resume work in the hospital effective from 8 a.m. on Monday.
MDCAN said it was standing solidly behind the Resident Doctors and their demands, adding that their members could not work effectively without the complementary roles they play in the healthcare value chain.
The consultants threatened to go on full blown industrial shut down after reviewing the situation before the end of the month if nothing was done by Governor Willie Obiano to address their demands too.
It said: “MDCAN COOUTH Awka hereby suspends the strike and all members shall forthwith resume work.
“We strongly condemn the seeming unresponsiveness of the government at creating the enabling environment for amicable resolution of the impasse which is having heavy effect on our patients.
“We resolve that as long as the Resident Doctors are continuing with their strike which commenced in May 13, our operations as consultants are geared towards being undermined without these young doctors playing the very much needed complementary roles.”
The consultants also called for 100 per cent implementation of Consolidated Medical Salary Scale for all doctors in COOUTH with all accrued arrears and release of Conditions of Service for which staff of the hospital had not got promotion.
They called on Obiano to provide the minimum standard acceptable in the healthcare sector to enable doctors and other staff function optimally.
It said: “We can no longer cope with the current situation where the least qualified medical doctor (House Officer) in federal institutions in Nigeria earn better than the most qualified medical doctors (Consultants/Professors) in the employ of COOUTH.
“Medical doctors in COOUTH can no more tolerate the present status quo whereby the entire workers are stagnated without any form of promotion since the inception of the teaching hospital in 2012 owing to the absence of operational Condition of Service.”