By Doris Obinna
The Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) and Association of Health Healthcare Professionals (AHPA) have tasked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to re-position the Nigerian health sector by appointing seasoned administrators.
The unions said appointment outside the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) portfolio would enable them to have a fair chance of re-positioning the failed health sector rated 187th out of 191 health systems under the guidance of Nigerian physicians.
JOHESU’s acting national secretary, Matthew Ajurotu, said in a statement: “The president must allow the reforms shaping Nigeria in the last few days catch up with the health sector because most of his contemporary predecessors have allowed physicians to enjoy an unfortunate usurpation of the authoritative exclusivity of non-physician health workers in Nigeria.”
The statement was in reaction to a recent publication by the NMA and the Nigerian Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA), that both medical groups were unanimous in taking a position that an adjustment in the Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS) would amount to a distortion in the relativity of existing CONHESS and Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS).
“The CONHESS and CONMESS became salary scales for Non-Physician and Physician cadres in 2009.
“Prior to the introduction of discriminatory salary scales in Nigeria especially the era pre-1991 when late Olikoye Ransome-Kuti under the military regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida imposed the Medical Salary Scale (MSS), the norm was that pharmacists and physicians entered the civil service on the equivalent of grade level (GL) 08 for internship and houseman-ship respectively and move to GL 09 after National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
“Other health professionals who are graduates started on GL 08 after NYSC, while registered nurses and midwives started on GL 07. At both the federal and state civil service, pharmacists and physicians were on the same GL and enjoyed only a marginal one GL difference over other health professionals because of the difference in years of training.
“Without any fundamental shift in the duration of training or course content, physicians under the aegis of the NMA took maximal advantage of their dominance of the leadership bracket of the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) to alter the Augean stable with a discriminatory salary scale styled MSS while non-physicians including health professionals were placed on the Health Salary Scale (HSS).
“This status quo was further altered to give more advantage by another physician-Health Minister, Late Prof. Oshotimehim who again came up with an equally oppressive CONHESS and CONMESS scale for non-physicians and physicians personnel in 2009.
“Without recourse to bar-charts, graphs and other arithmetical indices for simplicity, the status quo today is that physicians now enter the civil service for houseman-ship on the equivalent of GL 10 and proceed to GL 13 after NYSC.”
They claimed that all avenues to redress the injustice of discriminatory salary wages to non-physician health workers was destroyed by the trio of Prof. Christian Chukwu 2011-2015, Prof. Isaac Adewole 2015-2019 and Dr. Osagie Ehanire 2019-2023 when they led the FMoH.
“The issues of relativity between CONHESS and CONMESS will shock observers of the sector despite the wailing propensities of NMA and NAMDA.”