Abuja — National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has urged the Federal Government to approve and implement the Medical Salary Scale (MSS), a uniform salary structure that will erase the current disparity in wages of Nigerian medical doctors.

NARD noted that the proposed salary package will encourage more doctors to serve in rural areas, improve the primary health care system, create industrial harmony and check brain drain in the sector.

NARD President, Dr Usman Bature, said the uniform wage structure will also ensure that people at the grassroots have access to healthcare, which would enable the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the health sector.

Bature, in an address delivered at the Continuing Medical Education (CME) seminar organised by NARD in Abuja, said NARD had always wanted to meet the health needs of rural dwellers and had over the years encouraged its members to work in remote communities, since majority of the nation's populace live in the rural areas where infant mortality, maternal mortality, as well as HIV/AIDS have been on the rise.

He, howvever, called on government to assist in providing basic health facilities, to enable doctors offer clinical services, health talks and intervention measures in these under-served areas.

Meanwhile, NARD had also joined other unions in the health sector to demand for a substantive minister for the Federal Ministry of Health.

The doctors argued that the health sector was too wide and challenging for it to be left without a substantive head since March, when the former Minister of Health, Professor Adenike Grange and her deputy, Architect Gabriel Aduku were sacked.