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Agatha Emeadi
The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA)’s rejection of the approved Scheme of Service for Pharmacist Consultancy cadre in the Federal Public Service has drawn the ire of the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) and Assembly of Healthcare Professional Associations (AHPA) as they criticised the body’s ceaseless denigration of other healthcare professionals in the country.
The union comprising six registered trade unions, while reacting to NMA’s position, condemned what it termed an age-long disdain for other professionals by medical doctors.
The NMA had through its national publicity secretary; Dr. Aniekeme Uwah, referred the approved Scheme of Service for Pharmacist Consultancy cadre in Federal Public Service as an unwarranted assault on the integrity of the medical profession.”
The unions in a document jointly signed by the representatives of the trade union bodies described NMA’s position on the matter as “incomprehensible, illogical and ridiculous.”
It reads in part: “It remains incomprehensible, how approval of a consultant cadre in pharmacy practice would amount to an assault on the integrity of medical practice in Nigeria.
“The nature of healthcare is changing everyday with new emerging clinical disease states and quest for treatment and management of same. These challenges come with more complications in patient therapy, especially when care providers have to deal with multiple disease states in one patient. To optimise therapeutic outcome in patient-care in today’s world, a pharmacist needs the right knowledge to help support our patients.
“Physicians also need in-patient clinical support of pharmacists to excel and to compel a boost in competencies of care-givers across board in the country.”
The aggrieved union pointed out that “healthcare is not an indigenous practice novel to Nigeria and its many under-achieving propensities, adding “healthcare cannot be driven by the egocentric proclivities of Nigerian doctors, but by global best practices.”
