By Adeyinka Adeniran
Nigeria Medical Association has commended Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state for the increasing budgetary allocation to the health sector, saying the moving is an improvement from previous administrations.
However, the Association said the government needs to do more to ensure that the budgetary allocation translate to visible and tangle effects that can be felt by the people.
Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association, Oyo State Chapter, Dr Happy Adedapo made the call on Monday during a press conference to flag off the National Physician’s Week at the NMA House, Ibadan. He was flanked at the conference by other executive members of the Association in the state.
The theme of the conference is “Ensuring universal applicability in remuneration: A panacea to talent retention in the healthcare system” with a sub-theme “mitigating the impact of infectious diseases: addressing the monkeypox outbreak and beyond”.
Dr Adedapo said, “I can say categorically, World Health Organisation (WHO) says 15 percent of the budgets must be allocated to health. And for the past governments, at least two to three past governments, the allocation has always hovered between 5% and 6%. But give it to Governor Seyi Makinde. He has increased it to about 9.5percent or thereabouts.
“But, unfortunately, we have not seen the effects. Because when you budget 9.5% of your entire budget to health, there should be some changes. We should be able to see some levels of innovations.
“We should be able to see some equipment in all these state government institutions, which is not the case.
“And even at a point, I was reliably informed, the governor actually said that, they keep telling him that doctors are leaving the country but the wage bill is still the same.
“So what the governor might needs to do is probably carry out a forensic audit. Let us know where that money is going to.
“We are making an effort to actually get to meet with the government, and these are some of the things that we might, you know, tell him, when eventually we get to meet him.”
Speaking on the theme, Dr Adedapo who earlier presented the speech of the National President, Prof Bala Audu said the call for an improved and universal pay for doctors is to create a kind of benchmark that create competition among state and Federal government in terms of remuneration for doctors.
He said, just like the ongoing talks on National minimum wage for works, universal applicability in remuneration for doctors will be create room for even and spread growth among the tiers of health care facilities across the country, especially in attracting quality personnel.
“We are not saying it must be exactly what federal government is paying, but it must be close. We don’t expect a doctor in federal government facility to be earning N100,000, and then in states, you are paying them N35,000. Even the people that are going on brain drain now, it’s not as if, in some of the countries that our doctors are, especially in the West African sub-region, some of them don’t really pay much, but it’s still far better than what’s obtained here.
“That is what we are trying to see, we understand the plight of some state governments, but we believe that if these governments are able to get their priorities right by giving healthcare the attention that it deserves”, he added.
