A decision by some junior doctors at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) to call off their six-day-old strike and resume work has broken the front of the striking doctors.
Even though the doctors who have decided to call off the strike are in the minority, they said they believed they had a duty to save lives and they could, therefore, not continue with the action, especially as the hospital authorities and the government had displayed good faith and commitment to address their grievances.
The numbers are difficult to come by but while some of them have resumed official duties and could be seen actively helping their respective departmental heads to deliver service to their clients, others have ignored emergency cases that had been flooding the hospital since the industrial action started.
Ironically, it was the commitment of this minority junior doctors to duty which saved the sight of a Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Mr Kwadwo Sarfo Kantanka, who is also the father of Dr Sarfo Kantanka, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Junior Doctors Association, who is the leader of the striking doctors.
The elder Sarfo Kantanka needed an emergency operation at the Eye Department of KATH to correct a defect in his eye at the time the industrial action was at its peak.
It was also at that time that some eye specialists from the University of Utah were collaborating with their KATH counterparts to perform surgery on patients with eye defects at the hospital. In spite of the strike, the junior doctors at the Eye Department were present to support the programme.
Their presence, and the active support offered the team from Utah, made it possible for the Deputy EC Chairman to go through very successful surgery.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic on the issue of working while some of their colleagues had put down their tools, Dr Yaw Obeng Nsiah of the Accident and Emergency Centre of KATH said patients, most of whom were ordinary Ghanaians, should not be made to suffer on an issue which solely rested with the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to negotiate on.
Explaining, he said the issue of the strike should have been initiated by the parent body, which is the GMA, so it was wrong, in the first place, for the junior doctors at KATH to have started it.
“Some of us defied the strike and have been actively working since last Friday because the order did not come from the GMA, which is the parent body,” Dr Nsiah noted.
“Besides, the sector minister had shown the goodwill that he was addressing the issue on the accumulated fuel allowances which was used as one of the grievances for embarking on the action,” he added.
He also noted that since the strike started, the Chief Executive of KATH and his management team had not relented on their efforts to pay the fuel allowance of health workers and questioned the rationale behind the strike to put the lives of taxpayers in danger.
Referring to Dr Sarfo Kantanka’s father who had been well treated by his colleagues who had remained committed to their professional oaths, Dr Nsiah said it could have happened to me, “hence our resolve to work to facilitate quality delivery of medical services”.
Expressing concern over the state of affairs now, he said it was their leaders who had woefully failed to address the issue of salary negotiations and conditions of service in the past years and wondered why it should become a primary grievance at a time a new government had just resumed office.
“Instead of negotiating with the previous government on issues of salaries and conditions of service, the executives of the GMA were concerned with the deduction of dues and pension deductions,” he noted.
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