#JOHESUStrike2018: JOHESU Strike and Hubris of Medical Doctors

SIR: The nation’s health sector is again suffering a crippling showdown with the government on account of the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by the Joint Health Sector Unions, going by the acronym, “JOHESU”, a confederacy of health workers unions in the health sector in Nigeria. Shorn of all posturings, the bone of contention is pay disparity, and attendant privileges, between JOHESU and their counterpart, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), a sister union, comprising exclusively of medical doctors, in the health family tree, that prides itself the lord of the manor.

The medical doctors’ assumed pride of place in the health sector may have undoubtedly informed their mindset of conceiving the health sector, as vast and as widely-embracing as it is, as their principality whose firmament they alone must bestride like the legendary colossus, to exploit the attendant milk and honey, to the exclusion of all others in the family tree. Otherwise, how else does one explain the Solomonic position and posturing of the NMA against parity of pay and privileges of certain appointments between its members and members of the other health professionals in the health sector? In the not so distant past, the unhealthy agitation by NMA in consequence of the rumoured consideration for appointment of the now late Professor Dora Akunyuli as Health Minister during the time of late President Umaru Yar’ Adua will forever leave a sour taste in the mouth. The then leadership of the NMA was quoted in the media as bitterly complaining of the non-inclusion of any medical doctor in the list of the ministerial nominees undergoing screening then at the National Assembly.

While one would have passed JOHESU Strike and hubris of medical doctors government on account of the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by the Joint Health Sector Unions, going by the acronym, “JOHESU”, a confederacy of health workers unions in the health sector in Nigeria. Shorn of all posturings, the bone of contention is pay disparity, and attendant privileges, between JOHESU and their counterpart, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), a sister union, comprising exclusively of medical doctors, in the health family tree, that prides itself the lord of the manor. The medical doctors’ assumed pride of place in the health sector may have undoubtedly informed their mindset of conceiving the health sector, as vast and as widely-embracing as it is, as their principality whose firmament they such agitation as one of those struggles by professional bodies for relevance, it added a clincher, as to what becomes of the Health Ministry without a medical doctor making the list of the ministerial nominees, and therefore insinuating thereof that even with the like of Professor Dora Akunyuli, an accomplished professor of Pharmacy, being not a medical doctor, was not qualified to head the Health Ministry! The medical doctors got away with that hubris and are now poised for a greater pound of flesh in the health sector, hence the complexity woven around the current JOHESU strike with doctors threatening to embark on strike should the members of JOHESU ever extract any favourable bargain of pay parity with the members of NMA.

It is befuddling, to say the least, that our medical doctors are yet to appreciate and situate their functions within the context of global conception of “Health” which the World Health Organization has espoused and globally endorsed since 1948 to be “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” By this conception of health to include also the social and psychological well-being of the individual or the society at large Nigerian medical doctors must be reminded that the civilized world has since moved beyond the archaic and primordial thinking of looking at health issues from the narrow prism of the activities associated only with the white coat and stethoscope and should begin to explore by intellectual intercourse, the relevance and interplay of other interrelated fields of study in health. It is instructive that it is this shift in paradigm that informs the offering of post graduate studies such as Masters in Health SIR: The nation’s health sector is again suffering a crippling showdown with the Policy, for instance, even to nonhealth professionals, in some of the world renowned universities such as Harvard.

Canada, reputed to have one of the best health management systems in the world has had Leona Anglukkaq heading its Health Ministry. Her only qualification is a Master of Public Administration. In the US, the current Secretary of Health Alex Azar, is not a medical doctor. He is a lawyer! Before him was his predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius, who was the US Secretary of Health during the Obama regime. And She has, wait for it, a BSc in Political science and a Masters in Public Administrations! In the UK, Jeremy Hunt an Oxford graduate of Philosophy, Politics and Economics is the Health Secretary – s o much for NMA’s hubris.