The strike embarked upon by Primary Health Care workers in Rivers State has started taking its toll on nursing mothers in the state.
The workers had embarked on an indefinite strike two weeks ago to protest among other things, the non payment of their areas by the state government.
Some nursing mothers told DailyPost that their babies were at the risk of suffering from preventable child diseases like polio and measles if they failed to get proper immunization.
They said the striking health workers had refused to administer the needed vaccines on the babies.
A woman said, “If they continue with this kind of thing, my baby will be prone to suffer measles like my first chil”d.
Another nursing mother added, “They said they will not give immunization to our children. This kind of thing is not good. They should help us consider these innocent children. They are not the reason why the Governor has refused to pay them”.
Meanwhile, when contacted, the Vice Chairman of the Primary Health Sector in the state, Walson David Walson maintained that the strike would continue despite sympathizing with the nursing mothers.
Walson insisted that until the Government met their demands, the strike would continue.
“The strike will not be called off until the government of the day sincerely meets our demands.
“The reason is because we have had series of meeting with the government in a bid to solve this problem.
“But every promise made by this government in the past years and up until today has not been addressed.
“Government should be sincere enough to solve this problem once and for all. The issue of consolidated salary needs to be addressed”, he said.
However, Permanent Secretary of the Rivers State Ministry of Health, Dr. Somiari Isaac said the state was doing its best to resolve all pending issues with the primary health workers.
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