Prof Auwal Muhammad Abubakar, MD FMC Yola Elected Chairman
The Periscope Reporter
The Committee of Chief Executives of Federal Tertiary Health Institutions has elected new executive that would guide the affairs of the committee for the period of two years.
The election was conducted Friday, during the 10th Annual General Meeting of the committee.
The new leadership of the committee has Prof. Auwal Abubakar as Chairman, Prof. Emem Bassey as Vice Chairman and Secretary, Dr. Yahaya Baba Adamu as Treasurer.
Others include Prof. Anas Sabir as Representative of Teaching Hospitals, Dr. Victor Osiatuma as Representative Federal Medical Centres and Prof. Ibrahim Abdu Wakawa as Representative Specialty Hospitals.
Committee at its AGM, expressed worry over the mass exodus of health workers in the country, leading “to shortage of health personnel who left their duty posts without notices”.
The outgoing President, Dr Jaf Momoh, disclosed this while reading a communiqué issued by the committee at the end of its 10th annual general meeting of the committee.
“We express concerns over the exodus of health workers from our hospitals to various countries; our workers are the best trained and we need to retain them. We need to improve conditions of service. In lieu of this, we call on the Federal Government to release outstanding arrears that need to be paid.
“There should also be a clear policy of emergency replacement of health workers by CMDs when they exit. Most of the workers exit without notices. We need to have a policy where CMDs can employ new workers directly without waiting for waivers. There should be an avenue to replace health workers who exit without notice.
“For example, you come to the hospital today and you hear that your doctor has exited the country. They are leaving in large numbers and this is no longer limited to nurses.
“Some of them will leave and even give you their one month salary in lieu of notice. You get six of such in a week, what do you do? There should be an urgent way of replacing them,” Month said.
Momoh advised the government to make sure that efforts were made to curb the spread of the new Omicron variant in the country.