Health professionals have called for the review of aspects of the Contributory Health Scheme bill before the Ondo State House of Assembly.
The pharmacists, medical laboratory scientists and nurses want membership and chairmanship of the proposed board of the scheme to be open to all health practitioners.
Specifically, the concerned health practitioners rejected the provision of the proposed law, which made the headship of the scheme an exclusive right of medical doctors.
The practitioners expressed their opposition at a news conference addressed by representatives of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) and the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) in Akure, Ondo State capital.
Speaking on behalf of the health practitioners, the National Vice Chairman of Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, Samuel Adekola, described the exclusion of other health practitioners from the headship of the proposed agency as oppressive, highly discriminatory and misleading.
He said membership and chairmanship of the proposed Board of the Health Insurance Scheme should be opened to all health professionals rather than only medical doctors as proposed in the bill.
“We strongly advocate for the deletion of the misleading definition of Medical Practitioner as captured in the draft bill. Since, the decree 10 of 1985 which stipulates that only medical practitioners are medically qualified to be heads of medical institutions in Nigeria is well known to be highly discriminatory, sectional, oppressive and limiting the right of individual health professional in attaining administrative positions, and in any case the obstinate decree is currently being challenged in court”, Adekola said.
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