Friday, 21 February 2014

HEALTH BILL EXCITES DOCTORS


The National Health Bill, which passed Senate Wednesday, has excited Nigeria’s medical community, though it still lingers in the House of Representatives.
Since late year and shortly before going on recess, the senate hinted it considered the bill “as good as being passed,” according to Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, head of the senate’s health committee. It came after legislators in Senate went through the first 26 clauses of the bill. “I believe that that health bill is good enough for us,” Okowa said then.

Nigeria Medical Association praised Senate’s “dispassionate consideration and passage” of the bill. It urged the House of Representatives to “do same and give Nigerians cause for greater joy and celebration within the shortest possible time.”

In a statement, the association’s president Dr Osahon Enabulele said, putting up a national health act will “help to put a stop to the several avoidable deaths of children, women, the elderly and other Nigerians as a result of poor and inequitable access to a minimum package of healthcare services which the Nigerian state truly owes her citizens.”

“We also thank all Nigerians who stood by the bill, particularly ordinary Nigerians, the press and the women of Nigeria for their undiluted courage, firm resolve and unparalleled patriotic commitment towards the passage of the long-awaited National Health Bill,” he added.

The passage comes nearly a decade since the bill started its journey through legislation.
It has also been the point of controversies between separate groups of health workers.

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