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JOE EFFIONG UYO
A retired medical surgeon in Akwa Ibom State, Dr. Albert Ekop, has appealed to all levels of government in Nigeria to take the remuneration of medical practitioners moreVseriously in order to combat the trending Japa syndrome in the country.
Dr Ekop has however urged young medical professionals in Nigeria to equally see their training as a call for social service and not as a means to economic aggrandizement .
Ekop, an octogenarian who spoke on Wednesday in Uyo Akwa Ibom State while fielding questions from journalists after the launch of his book “The Tailor” said government must do the needful by ensuring that medical doctors are properly remunerated.
He added that the rat race for greener pastures among young Nigerian doctors would be reduced if they go back to the curriculum of training of medical students which emphasizes health care as a social service and not an economic service.
Ekop said ” I think the first step will be the curriculum of training of medical students, we should go back to what we used to learn that health care is a social service not an economic service. If we say this to the minds of these young people, the rat race for greener pastures will be reduced.
“Government too should be told that people who sacrifice for the health of individuals souls should be compensated,not when they complain you just dismissed them with the wave of the hand. They are human beings, they buy from the same market. Government should take a second look at the remuneration of medical doctors”
He explained that the title of book,The Tailor” which is the first profession he father wanted him to pursue is symbolic of medical surgeon as in that they both repair broken parts
In a forward to the book, a former commissioner of health, in the state, Dr Dominic Ukpong, said that the father of the author was a strick disciplinarian who was determined to educate his children even on loan, despite dissuasion from friends.
Ukpong said it was out of that desperation that he advised young Ekop to go and do tailoring, in the interim, a very “humble and challenging instruction to an intelligent, ambitious, budding academic star”
He added that the call for tailoring made a significant impact on the young Ekop hence the title of the book” The Tailor”. ENDS
