RAYMOND OZOJI reports
The Anambra State Chapter of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) has tasked Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo CFR to recruit more nurses to fill the gaps in hospitals across the state.
The association has also appealed to the governor to pay rural posting allowances to nurses posted to hard-to-reach rural areas to ameliorate their sufferings and equally motivate them to accept postings to such remote areas.
Anambra NANNM chairperson, Mrs. Edith Onwuka, who spoke to this journalist about the urgent need to recruit more nurses in hospitals, observed that nurses are in short supply at the moment and that the nurse-patient ratio of the World Health Organization (WHO) standard has not been met in the state.
Onwuka noted that even though the state government is on the verge of achieving the WHO standard of nurse-patient ratio, she maintained that Anambra state is not yet there.
According to her, it is expected that in every primary healthcare facility there would be at least two midwives and there are about six hundred and thirty primary healthcare facilities in the state.
She expressed concerns that the nurses at the primary healthcare centres were not up to six hundred; noting that there is a huge gap in the nurse-patient ratio.
The Anambra NANNM chairperson equally observed that at the General Hospitals, there are still some hospitals manned by one nurse like the General Hospital Akwaihedi Nnewi-South Local Government Area of the state, where she said they have just one nurse and two cleaners only.
The State NANNM chairperson who raised the issue of rural posting allowances, emphasized the dire need for government to pay nurses posted to very remote areas like the aforementioned Akwaihedi rural posting allowances to enable them to settle down and work and not abscond from duty due to sufferings.
She said that the issue was not recruiting health workers but retaining them as she believed that some people may not want to work in hard-to-reach areas but would prefer to resign to save themselves from the excruciating experience they may encounter in the course of their services.
Although Onwuka noted that workers' remuneration was no longer an issue in Anambra State as she acknowledged that Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo has paid nurses and other health workers Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS) but she insisted that rural posting allowances helped people working in difficult areas to ameliorate their sufferings in such areas.
She therefore reiterated that NANNM needs government to recruit more nurses to improve nurse-patient ratio in the hospitals in accordance with WHO standard which she said was four patients to one nurse and not the situation in Anambra where one nurse handled about twenty patients.
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