Abuja (Nigeria) – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has pled with the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to cancel its proposed strike and give the Federal Government time to address their grievances.
Buhari made the plead at a meeting with the leadership of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) at the State House, Abuja
Statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the president, Garba Shehu, assured that no agreements duly entered into by the Federal Government would be dishonored by the present administration.
He called for greater understanding and support from doctors and Nigerians in view of the present short fall in national revenue brought about by the declining crude oil prices.
The President also gave the NMA delegation an insight into his administration’s plan to establish 10, 000 primary healthcare centres across the country in the next two years with the objective of providing better healthcare for about 100 million Nigerians.
He also told the delegation led by NMA President, Dr. Kayode Obembe that the National Health Act will soon be gazette and a steering committee will be appointed to oversee its implementation.
It will be recalled that NARD on 4th April gave the Federal Government a 21 day ultimatum to meet their demands or face an indefinite strike.Some of their demands includes; payments of members’ salaries till date and appropriate placement of members in states and federal tertiary hospitals across the nation. Others are reversal of sacked members in some hospitals as well as appropriate funding of residency training programmes.
Culled from news24
