2 months ago
6
Claim: On Tuesday, the Provost of the Kwara State College of Health Technology, Offa, Dr Aliyu Alabi, during a TV press briefing with the African Independent Television, said health technology graduates can perform the roles of medical doctors in hospitals if empowered.
He said, “…I think one of the best things the government can do is to encourage the products of health technology institutions. To strengthen them more so that they can take over where you don’t have doctors and other allied professionals.
“Recently, you discover that some of our products are so vast that in some places they address them as doctors – of course, we want to believe that in every health sector, you have a limit. That is why we have assistant technicians and we have scientists in some cases.”
Findings
In recent times, public health institutions in Nigeria have groaned under heavy burden following the massive exodus of medical professionals to other countries.
Though the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, said the National Policy on Health Workforce Migration would address the lingering brain drain, findings showed that the ugly trend has brought about undue comparison between health technicians and medical doctors in the country due to the multiple tasks being carried out by the former in most hospitals lacking adequate qualified medical staff.
But unlike doctors, health technology graduates are trained to provide basic health care to people in off-the-grid communities. They function as assistants to doctors, and nurses in secondary health institutions, even though they have basic technical knowledge in areas like pharmacy, medical laboratory and others that qualify them for the roles of technicians or assistants to medical personnel.
According to experts, health technology officers are very important assets in the medical profession, but they cannot replace the medical personnel due to the various levels of training doctors, nurses and med lab scientists undergo.
Speaking to Sunday PUNCH, the Chairman of the Medical Guild, Dr Moruf Abdulsalam, said there was no way health tech workers could replace doctors and other medical workers in any hospital because their training differs.
He said, “The training received by doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals in the health care space differs greatly from that obtained by the graduates of the schools of health technologies. Hence, our role and job descriptions also differ. Thus, there can’t be a role reversal.
“If they desire to be doctors, they can take advantage of the many medical schools in the country to enroll,” he explained.
VERDICT: The claim is false
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