Threatens erring members over privatisation

• Uyo to host conference of society

THERE appears to be no end in sight for crisis in
the health sector as pharmacists under the aegis of
Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) have
accused the federal government of reneging on
agreement signed with health workers under the
umbrella of Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) on
improved welfare of members.
The PSN said strike is not unlikely despite the
maturity of JOHESU and Assembly of Healthcare
Professionals (AHPA) as it is apparent that
government will not bulge until another round of
disruption in health services becomes a reality.
The Society, which is set to hold its 87th Annual
National Conference in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State from
Monday November 3 to Saturday November 8th,
2014, has also issued a clarion call on
pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies and
stakeholders to familiarise with the tenets of the
Public Private Partnership (PPP) guidelines of the
Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) before
formalising contracts with public pharmacy
facilities.

National President of PSN, Olumide Akintayo, in an
exclusive interview with The Guardian said
violations of existing provisions of the PPA Cap
535 LFN 1990, Cap P. 17 LFN 2004, gazettes 79
and 81 of August 2005 and the code of ethics for
pharmacists in Nigeria will attract sanctions from
the PSN as erring members will be placed on the
roll of dishonour of the Society.
On the welfare on health workers and the imminent
strike action, Akintayo said: “I have no doubt that
you will recall that about seven months ago at this
very venue on January 6, 2014, I addressed the
nation alongside the Chairmen of JOHESU and
AHPA on crucial matters pertaining to the welfare
of health workers and inter-professional
relationships. Alongside these key platforms of
trade unions and professionals associations, we
issued an ultimatum for a strike, which eventually
crystallised on January 22, 2014.
“You will remember that what followed was a total
shut-down of health facilities across the nation
including primary, secondary and tertiary facilities.
Government and public appeals forced us on that
occasion to temporarily suspend the strike in the
hope that government will be more responsive by
identifying with the minimum demands of these
templates which we continually remind all who
care to listen embraces over 95 per cent of the
entire health workforce in Nigeria.
“I wish to put on record that seven months after
we commenced a robust attempt to redress the
unfortunate status quo in healthcare in Nigeria, we
are still left in the cold. Government as a matter of
fact has traded off salient Memoranda Of
Understanding (MOUs) it signed with us in a bid to
placate doctors when they embarked on their
unlawful and illegal strike for seven weeks between
July and August.”

Akintayo said the experience since these chain of
events has been for government to become elusive
by tactically relegating most areas of their demand
as subject matters that have been referred to the
Yayale Ahmed led Presidential Committee of
experts who seek harmony in the health sector.
He said while the PSN appreciates that Mallam
Yayale Ahmed, a seasoned bureaucrat and the
crop of distinguished health professionals who
work with him may mean well in charting an
agenda that moves the health sector forward, the
fact of the matter is that it is still largely an
advisory/administrative panel which logically
implies that if it comes up with some
recommendations not acceptable to groups or
some dramatis personae the recommendations
might not be binding.
Akintayo insusted that government reliance on the
Yayale Ahmed panel to right all wrongs in the
sector may epitomise a grandeur of delusion or an
unrealisable utopia as pharmacists remain
witnesses to how the federal ministry of health in
alliance with some Nigerian doctors sabotaged the
noble recommendations of the Justice Gusau panel
a few years ago.
“That development was hinged on the reality that
the Gusau panel report touched without fear
specific measures to correct the aberrations and
distortions in healthcare especially those
entrenched by the obnoxious decree 10 of 1985
which remains the albatross we contend with in the
health sector since the inglorious days of late
Olikoye Kuti. Prof. Olikoye Kuti, it was who
disrupted the harmony in the health sector by
legalising the headship of hospitals, which he
vested in his doctor colleagues as well as
introducing discriminatory salary wages in favour
of his colleagues, a development which is
responsible for the industrial disharmony we have
experienced in the labour sector for over 23 years
now,” he further explained.

Akintayo said the PSN puts on record that
government has failed to come up with circulars in
tandem with MOUs it has signed with the labour
unions, JOHESU, in fundamental areas.
These fundamental areas include: Non promotion
of members from salary Consolidated Health Salary
Structure (CONHESS) 14 to15 as directors having
stayed for four to15 years on the same salary level
without promotion in most Federal Tertiary
Hospitals; immediate release of circular on
adjustment of salary since January 2014 and
immediate payment of at least two months arrears
while the remaining is paid after being
accommodated in the 2015 budget; immediate
release of the circular on extension of retirement
age to be back dated to February 2014 when the
issue was presented to National Council on
establishment; immediate and full payment of
arrears of salaries of CONHESS 10 skipping
outstanding since the year 2010; and immediate
amendment of the circular on consultancy status
as pronounced by National Industrial Court on
22nd July, 2013, and agreed to at a meeting of
12th August, 2014, with the Federal Government.
Others include: Payment of arrears of specialist
allowance to qualified hospital based professionals
with effect from January 1, 2010 in line with
National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) ruling;
minimizing the lopsidedness in the membership of
Boards of Management of Tertiary Hospitals; need
to define the functions and power of honourary
consultants in Teaching Hospitals and the need to
appoint more hospital based consultants instead of
Honourary Consultants; need for residency
programme for all health professionals; issuance
of guidelines on appointment of Chairman, Medical
Advisory Committee and the committee’s
composition; need for complete autonomy for the
Teaching Hospitals by removing University
lecturers as heads in some of the clinical
departments; and restoration of working days as
annual leave.

Akintayo said the direct fall-out is that a whole
generation of pharmacists and health workers are
stagnated on the same salary scale for upwards of
10 years in many instances. He said in some other
dimensions Pharmacists and health workers who
have invested personal resources on professional
and manpower development are denied reward for
labour as government which showed initial interest
in remunerating the fellowship programme has
succumbed to the blackmail of Nigeria doctors
who insist through the proclamation of the Prof.
Onyebuchi Chukwu led Federal Ministry of Health
that it is only doctors who can be designated
consultants contrary to international best practice
and a 1976 public service circular that recognises
consultancy status for eligible health professionals.
Akintayo said the experience of pharmacists
appears worse because as far back as 1997 the
West Africa Postgraduate College of Pharmacists
(WAPCP) produced the first set of Fellows.
He further explained: “The fellowship of the WAPCP
was formally recognised as a condition precedent
for a consultancy status in Nigeria since 2009, yet
the Federal Government has failed to remunerate
these consultant pharmacists because another
group of employees say it is unacceptable.
“While pharmacists pay with their own resources
for Post-graduate training, government often times
pays through scholarships and subsidies for the
training of doctors.”
On the possibility of another round of industrial
action by health workers, Akintayo said: “One is
forced to wonder loudly why government must wait
for the threat of a strike before it concedes to
legitimate privileges to its workers. The reality of a
strike is not unlikely despite the maturity of
JOHESU and AHPA as it is apparent that
government will not bulge until another round of
disruption in health services becomes a reality.
“Beyond strikes which pose severe economic
consequences morbidity and outright fatalities the
Nigerian government must realise that its recent
strategies to impose a master-servant relationship
in the health sector is beginning to generate ripple
effects at the detriment of national development.”

The pharmacist said new generations of Nigerians
who naturally abhor an underdog status are
shunning science-based programmes other than
medicine beyond the frontiers of healthcare now.
Akintayo said a recent survey in one of the first
generation universities confirmed that 53.8 per
cent of applications for the sciences was for only
medicine, while the other science based
professional courses including pharmacy,
engineering, architecture, estate management and
others shared 46.2 per cent. He said the result
was that cut of mark for medicine at the post-jamb
examination was put at over 80 per cent at a time
other course could not meet up quotas.
“This is the reality we shall confront in a nation
where ego propensities count for so much. The
PSN therefore admonishes government to be
dispassionate in redressing matters of equitable
distribution of resources and privileges in
healthcare or to seriously consider scrapping other
professional programmes it has treated with
contempt in the last couple of years,” he added.
On the issue of privatisation of pharmacy facilities
and the sanction of erring members, Akintayo said:
“The attention of the PSN has been drawn to
recent public notices emanating from the Registry
of the PCN with regards to a PPP philosophy. We
at PSN believe very much in the spirit of a private
sector driven economy and logically support the
concept of legitimate models of a PPP.
“Pharmacy practice is a regulated one with a
myriad of regulatory agencies having substantial
latitudes of influence. These agencies include PCN,
National Agency for Food Drug Administration and
Control (NAFDAC), National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency (NDLEA), Federal and State Task force as
well as an array of other statutory agencies of
government.”

He said the Society is worried at attempts by some
state governments to reduce pharmacy practice to
a purely commercial venture of buying and selling
with absolutely no standards in the guise of a PPP.
Akintayo said there are patients who visit public
hospitals only because they assume drugs in such
facilities will be genuine in the reality of an
existing fake drug syndrome which continues to
ravage the health sector. This, he said, is why the
PSN continues to caution on the consequences of
diverting a guaranteed public sector market in
pharmacy facilities to private profiteers.
Akintayo said some of the fundamental fall-outs
that will always suffice remains who takes
responsibility when anything goes wrong with
respect to drugs dispensed in such public facilities
concession to profiteers.
He explained: “The profiteer or government?
Presently the Lagos State Government, which
blazed this trail has been able to adapt its
privatisation model to the PPP guidelines
prescribed by the PCN. There can be no
compromise on this demand in both the public and
professional interest.”
Akintayo said some of the Federal Health
Institutions (FHIs), which experimented with
privatisation in pharmacy facilities, are still in huge
mess even after such contracts have been
terminated because the profiteers who utilised the
goodwill of the institutions to source drugs from
the pharmaceutical industry simply sold the drugs
and pocketed the accruing revenue. He said many
of the pharmaceutical companies refuse to do
business with public health facilities up till now
with serious consequences for consumers of
health in such institutions.

Akintayo said the PSN therefore issues a clarion
call on pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies
and stakeholders to familiarise with the tenets of
the PPP guidelines of the PCN before formalising
contracts with public pharmacy facilities. Violations
of existing provisions of the PPA Cap 535 LFN
1990, Cap P. 17 LFN 2004, gazettes 79 and 81 of
August 2005 and the code of ethics for
Pharmacists in Nigeria will attract sanctions from
the PSN as erring pharmacists will be placed on
the roll of dishonour of the PSN.
The PSN appealed to affected state governments
and other stakeholders to dialogue immediately
with the PCN to facilitate lawful models of PPP in
their domains in public interest.
On the 87th Annual National Conference of the
Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria will hold in Uyo,
Akwa Ibom State from Monday November 3 to
Saturday November 8, 2014, Akintayo said: “This
conference comes with new packages including the
maiden Deans Forum, Directors of Pharmaceutical
Services Forum, and Head of Pharma, Federal
Health Institutions Forum as part of our agendum
to boost human relationship management. As part
of arrangements with PCN to revolutionalise
Mandatory Continuing Professional Development
(MCPD) credit point earnings, the continuing
education segment of the conference will hold at
the ultra-modern e-library facility of the Akwa Ibom
State Government in Uyo.


“The Board of Fellow and Young Pharmacists
Group will be energised through new processes to
optimise their potentials. An official social nite will
be hosted at some stages while the VIP forum,
which debuted in Ilorin last year will be
consolidated.”
Akintayo said the major highlight of the opening
ceremony would be awards of Ambassadors of the
Health Sector to four distinguished Nigerians,
which include: Governor of Ebonyi State, Chief
Martin Elechi; Chairman of JOHESU, Commrade
Ayuba Wabba; Chairman, AHPN, Dr. G. C. Okara;
and Chief Medical Director, University College
Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, Prof. Temitope Alonge.

Source: The Guardian.

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