Tunji Alausa Visits UCH As FG Sets Up Committee To Grant Waivers For Health Workers’ Employment

Eko Hot Blog reports that the Federal Government has set up a committee to address the issue of accumulated waiver request for employment of health workers in the various hospitals across the country to improve healthcare delivery.

Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Tunji Alausa, made this known when he paid a familiarisation visit to the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, Oyo State as part of his ongoing over-sight function visits to assess Federal Government owned health institutions in the country.

According to a statement issued by Patricia Deworitshe, the Director of Information in the Ministry of Health, on Friday, Alausa revealed the actions President Bola Tinubu is taking to address the challenge of shortage of human resource for health.

The minister noted that the president saw the need for the process of waivers to recruit healthcare workers to be more streamlined and simplified and that was why the approval of the issuance of waivers request for hospitals is now domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Health.

“This is due to some bottle necks faced by our Chief Medical and Medical Directors, in the process of getting waiver approvals. We reached out to the Head of Service of the Federation, (HOSF) Dr. Yemi Esan, who has been on top, working judiciously to get these approvals, but we just all decided that it will be easier if the waiver process starts from the Ministry,” he said.

“So going forward from January, we are setting up a waiver committee at the Ministry that will promptly review and address all waiver request from all our hospitals.”

Alausa, who assured Nigerians of accountability and transparency in the process, said each hospital would generate a request for the number of staff needed to the Ministry, which will then go to the HOSF for some checks and balances under the establishment law, to see what’s budgeted for the year.

Once the Ministry confirms that everything is verified, approval for the waiver will be sent to the Budget office were the funds will be made available, there won’t be delays anymore, the Minister stated.

Speaking further, he commended UCH for the various feats achieved in healthcare delivery, especially in the area of training, but said there is need to train more to meet our future needs.

“Today our lifestyles is changed, the kind of diseases we didn’t have fifty years ago we have them now, with different kinds of cardiovascular diseases, we need cardiac strengthening and other forms of cardiac interventions,” Dr. Alausa said.

“There is need to start training more specialist in the area of interventional cardiologist, electro physiologist, surgical oncologist and interventional radiologist to meet the needs of the present day health sector.”

He promised to look into challenges highlighted by the college, especially in the area of power, while advising the tertiary health institution to look into other alternative power supply sources like solar, adding that government will not rest on its oars in mobilizing more funding to strengthen and address the issues affecting the hospital and the health sector.

On his part, Prof. Jesse Otegbayo, Chief Medical Director of UCH, highlighted some of the challenges faced as well as achievements, which include; specialized surgical procedures in partnership with some UK based charities and other organizations as well as donations of equipment’s and infrastructures by well-meaning Nigerians.

He said one of the ambitions of the UCH is to move to quaternary level of care like some hospitals in the developed world. UCH, Ibadan at inception in 1948 prior to the Act of British Parliament had two Clinical Departments (Medical and Surgery) but now has 85 Department, 6 Units and 2 Divisions.

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