Fashola appeals to doctors, nurses never to down tools again

CITING their all-important role in the lives and well-being of all, the Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has said never again should doctors and nurses down tools in the state.

  Fashola argued that the two professions are like God in the affairs of the populace, and “never has it been heard of that God went on strike.”

  Speaking at the State Council on Health meeting on Tuesday, the governor said physicians and nurses are complementary allies that should never be on warpath or down tools, in the interest of their patients.

  The governor was speaking on a day medical doctors on the employ of the state government threatened to embark on three-day warning strike in another protest against unpaid salaries for the period the doctors were on strike in 2014. 

  Several entreaties and threats to down tools had failed to pacify the government that was acted in accordance with ‘no-work, no-pay’ rule. 

  The doctors have had several months of face-off and industrial action over labour and welfare issues in the last eight years of the administration.

  Fashola, however, brought the inhumanity of such exercise to the fore, stressing that the role played by health workers in any given society is too critical to embark on strike action at any slightest disagreement.

  Emphasizing their crucial role, he said doctors and nurses are the only set of people who could command the governor or any other, however highly paced, to do anything regarding their health and they would comply.

  “Physicians and nurses are the only set of people who can ask anyone to take off clothe and would do with question. They are the only one who can tell me never to go out and I won’t. If you commit adultery and you don’t want to tell anyone, you must confess to the physicians. ‎The reason you must tell them is for the diseases not to become epidemic. That is the enormity of the unexamined powers that they have over us,” he said.

  Fashola added that the Lagos health family is the Nigerian family, and have the duty to cater for millions of Nigerians. 

 He said further that through the commitment of the dedicated workforce in the health sector, the state had become very efficient in the area of public health service delivery in the last seven years plus.