The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has directed all the doctors at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital to withdraw from the hospital environment.
The directive is contained in a statement signed by Dr Osahon Enabulele, the NMA National President, and made available to newsmen in Abuja on Friday.
The NMA national leadership said the directive would remain in force pending when the safety of its member’s could be secured by the Federal Government, with other necessary conditions met.
On Thursday doctors, including the Chief Medical Director and health workers at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, were assaulted by men of the Nigerian Police Force.
This was as a result of the inability of the hospital morgue to accommodate the bodies of slain policemen brought in from Bama in Borno.
As a result of the assault, some health workers and patients sustained various degrees of injuries, including a fractured femur sustained by a resident doctor, while hospital property were vandalised.
“This increasing act of physical assault of medical doctors and other health workers in various health facilities across the country is extremely worrisome, despicable, condemnable, and most unfortunate.
“It clearly revalidates the fact that hospitals in Nigeria are no longer safe or sacred places,’’ the statement said.
Enabulele, however, called on the Inspector-General of Police and the Borno Commissioner of Police to restrain their officers and men from further assaulting health workers.
He also called on the Federal Government to ensure that the perpetrators of this act be brought to book, with adequate compensations paid to the injured and traumatised victims.
Enabulele restated the NMA’s call on government at all levels to urgently provide adequate security in all healthcare facilities in Nigeria.
“This will halt the increasing spate of violent attacks, kidnapping, robbery and assassination of doctors and other health workers,” he said.
He sympathised with all the victims and urged the Federal Government to take full responsibility for their treatment.
NAN
