NMA advises NYSC to engage at least one consultant for each camp

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has advised National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) authorities to engage the services of specialists, who are also consultants that would be attached to each orientation camp across the country, to supervise fresh graduate doctors to forestall incidences of deaths of corps members while at the camps.

Speaking exclusively to The Guardian in Lokoja yesterday, against the background of the death of three corps members at three separate camps owing to ill health at their orientation camps, where it is holding its quarterly National Executive Council meeting, NMA president, Dr. Mike Ozovehe Ogirima, said it is not the first time corps member would die in camp, saying the doctors that attended to them did their best.

“They referred them out of camp. They didn’t delay their referral; they referred them promptly. The next step the association is taking is to ensure each camp must be well linked with a senior supervising non-corper doctor, a specialist for each camp.

“We will advice NYSC to engage the services of specialists that would be attached to each camp, who are consultants in their own field, so that wherever we have such problem, the specialists are called in immediately.”

He explained that most of the corps members who are doctors manning the clinics in the camps are fresh doctors from the mandatory one-year mandatory post-graduation internship period (housemanship) who barely have requisite experience.

He advised that since the doctors are not well versed in all the fields of medicine the NYSC should engage the services of specialist within the environment of the camp to supervise these clinics in all the camps, saying: