Sultan Appeals to Resident Doctors to Call off Strike

Sultan Appeals to Resident Doctors to Call off Strike

By Onuminya Innocent

The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has appealed to the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to call off its strike in the interest of the nation.

The Sultan made the call at the Usman DanFodio University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto during the 20th annual general meeting and scientific conference of the Association of Paediatric Surgeons of Nigeria (APSON).

The monarch noted that as a profession that caters for human health, it should have exhausted all available channels of dialogue before embarking on the strike.

He said: “I’m a firm believer of dialogue. Let me ask you as a doctor, you took the Hippocratic oath to save lives, how will you feel when your patients die because you are on strike?”

The Sultan maintained that the strike is not a last resort, adding that the resident doctors should have consulted people like them who have the ear of the government before embarking on strike.

In his goodwill message, the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, said his government has prioritized the health sector because of the importance attached to it.

Represented by the Commissioner for Health, Dr Ali Inname, Tambuwal said his administration is constructing a teaching hospital and three specialist hospitals in the three senatoral districts of the state to render tertiary health care delivery to the people.

He further stated that some general hospitals in the state have also been upgraded in order to provide better health care services.

Tambuwal used the opportunity to state that the state has recorded zero case of COVID-19 in the last ast 165 days.

Earlier, the National President of APSON, Prof. Auwal Abubakar, called on the government to establish a specialist hospital in each of the six geopolitical zones for the children.

He said the call for the establishment of specialist hospitals for children across Nigeria would not only afford specialists in the field to address the increasing cases of trauma in children but also help in the tackling the high mortality and morbidity rate in the country.

Auwal, who is also the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the Federal Medical Centre, Yola, advocated the adoption of free medical care for children to improve on the nation’s health indices as it is done in advanced nations.

In his address, the CMD of Usman DanFodio University Teaching Hospital, (UDUTH), Sokoto, Prof. Anas Sabir, thanked the association for giving Sokoto a hosting right.

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