Lack of Ministers Cripples Health Sector - MDCAN

The inability of President Muhammadu Buhari to set up his cabinet and make major appointments in the country is beginning to take its toll in the health sector.

This is as many issues that can better be resolved by the Minister of Health or the Attorney General of Federation have been put on hold.

The President of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), Steve Oluwole, stated this while responding to questions from journalist in Abuja, yesterday.

He, however, appealed to the president to, a matter of urgency, set up his cabinet so that things can take shape, especially in the health sector.

On the other hand, the MDCAN has called on all Resident Doctors who are currently on strike across the country demanding for skipping salary adjustment to suspend their strikes.

The group further called on Medical Consultants in all the branches across the country to restore services in all specialties with the full complement of staff assigned to them to discharge their duties.

While lamenting on the effect of the delay of President Buhari to form his cabinet, the MDCAN President said: "The only thing that constrained us is that structure of government is not in place. We don't have ministers, no Attorney General of the Federation and all of that.

"So, once that is in place, you can be sure within hours, we will activate our own processes. We are concerned because most of the issues we want to raise, we can't do it. And we took consideration of some of the dynamics in our political system."

Oluwole, however, noted that in the United Kingdom for example, even if it is a new party that changes the other, things move smoothly within few hours. So, we can't say that it is a new party coming in that is why.

"I want to appeal to the president to expedite action. It becomes indefensible in our own democracy that this vacuum is created.

"When we watch the way our own democracy works, with the fights and dramas and all of that, then I can have some understanding that the president is having issues about who to appoint."

Commenting on the criteria of a person to be appointed as the next minister of health, Oluwole said: "I think the best person that should be there, not only that he should be a doctor, he must have basic medical qualifications. He must have post graduate qualifications; he must be a trained administrator.

"This is because he is serving multiple purposes because he automatically becomes the chief medical adviser to the president and there is no way of replicating that."