The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Benue State Chapter, has lamented over the non-payment of seven-month-old salaries and the shortage of medical practitioners in the state.
The association, which linked the shortage of practitioners to non-payment of salaries, said doctors in the state are currently struggling to contain the myriad of disease outbreaks.
Chairman of the association, Dr Usha Anenga, who made this known to The Nation yesterday in Abuja, said the state does not have enough capacity to handle the population.
Anenga, while speaking about the rising cases of Diphtheria across the country which has claimed 38 lives out of 123 confirmed cases so far, said some general hospitals have just one doctor.
He said: “We don’t have enough capacity. We have a huge challenge of personnel handling the population we have. In Nigeria, a doctor is servicing 10,000 people. How are doctors going to cope? In Benue state, there’s a shortage of doctors. Some general hospitals have just one doctor. Doctors in the state were owed salaries, some up to seven months, which is why they were leaving the state.
“They are not paid when due, their last salaries were that of July or September 2022. How do you expect such health workers to give their best? That is why they are leaving. In the last three years, we have had more than half of them leave that system. We need to sit down at a round table and address these issues frankly. I want to call on stakeholders to give these issues the seriousness they deserve.”
Anenga further spoke extensively about the disease, its transmission, symptoms, and preventive measures which he said included vaccination, avoidance of overcrowding, use of face masks, and observing basic hygiene such as handwashing.