48 doctors displaced by the recent flood in maiduguri

By: Bodunrin Kayode

48 doctors were badly affected by the last flood which took over the city of Maiduguri and some parts of Jere council areas of Borno state.

These practicing members of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) were completely displaced with their families from their homes by the raging waters from the Alau dam such that some of them had to seek for solace in 36 camps recreated for internally displaced people (IDPs) from flood.

Chairman of the NMA Dr Bukar Baki gave this revelation recently while having an exclusive interview with this reporter on the celebration of the world physician day at the NMA Secretariat in Maiduguri.

Dr Baki said that the executive did their best in ensuring that they visited the affected doctors who fled their homes from the flood waters and empathized with all of them individually.

“As a matter of fact, we gave them all the support they needed to make them fall in line with our standard of provision of welfare of our members.

” incidentally most of them who found themselves in IDP camps were involved in the provision of services to the entire populace which was affected by the sudden surge of water from Alau dam.

“This meant we had to activate our humanity support system for other flood affected residents to be involved in an instant outreach services to hundreds of residents in various camps that needed instant medical care.

“We even made sure that hot meals were cooked for the idps for the first one week of the flood. And that went a long way to help people out of despair.” Said the chairman.

The Chairman noted that the annual physician week is set aside by the United Nations to celebrate doctors and understand their contemporary challenges even as they proffer solutions to some of them.

Speaking on the peculiar challenges affecting his members, the Chairman regretted that brain drain is one glaring problem which occurs as a result of the lingering disparity between practitioners in the country and others outside who work in much more conducive environments.

“Brain drain is our major problem in this part of the country. We have just about 800 doctors providing services to people in the entire state and you know what that means. It puts a stress on individual doctors who do the jobs of many.

” This is what results into burn out which in most circumstances is a very strong factor responsible for the state government loosing many doctors to other states with more personnel and remunerations.

“Health care should be paid across board because health is not on the exclusive list in terms of remuneration. So in response to your question, we would be glad if the federal government can take over the payments of remuneration doctors as they have done in the judiciary to ensure sanity and stability.

” The state govt loosing lots of medical doctors yearly and this is worrisome to us because one doctor is left to hundreds of patients in a day and you know what that means to the mental state of that practitioner. That is the only way to mitigate the problem.” He stressed.

On arrears for his colleagues, Baki said that the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) salary structure was revised and implemented from January this year but they are yet to see the corresponding response to this on their pay slips.

No doctor however lost his life to the flood which came about as a result of the sudden collapse of the Alau dam 25km away which collapsed and emptied itself into the city centre destroying the homes of over 200,000 people.

48 doctors displaced by the recent flood in maiduguri