From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Enugu
Resident doctors at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Ituku Ozalla and their counterparts in Enugu State University Teaching Hospital (ESUT-TH), Parklane, Enugu, have joined the ongoing nationwide strike by the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD).
At ESUT-TH Parklane, patients were seen complaining and waiting for doctors endlessly even after paying for doctors’ consultation fees while relatively healthy ones were being discharged in their numbers to go home.
Daily Sun observed that there were very few Consultants and House Officers attending to the large number of patients already admitted at the hospital before yesterday.
Speaking on the development, the President, ARD ESUT-TH, Parklane Chapter, Dr Emmanuel Edoga, said the association in the state-owned teaching hospital had fully mobilised and joined the ongoing strike.
‘We have down tooled as directed and what we did early this morning is to stabilise patients previously under our care and discharge some of them fit to be out-patient,’ he said.
‘However, we still have our senior doctors, the consultants, as well as House Officers still attending to patients and holding sway until we resolve the current impasse with the federal and state governments.’
Edoga hinted that they would also review the situation after 72 hours and hoped that the authorities would do the needful.
Meanwhile, patients and relations were furious in complaining of the man-hours they wasted waiting to be attended to in vain.
One of them, Mrs Juliet Onyia, who brought her baby to the children’s ward, claimed she had waited for over four hours saying, ‘they knew about this, they should not have collected the doctor’s consultancy fee of N500 from me since they are not working.
‘Nobody deemed it fit to inform me earlier about the development for me to take my child to another hospital. This situation is unfortunate.’
A patient at the surgical ward, Mr Emma Onuh, said: ‘I was not told of this development. I came all the way from my village in Eke community in Udi Local Government.’
The situation was the same at UNTH according to a Resident Doctor who spoke to Daily Sun: ‘We have joined the strike. It is the Consultants and House Officers that you will see in the hospital. We are bound by the decisions of the National body of our association.’