By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Nigeria needs to employ no fewer than 250,000 medical doctors in order to meet the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standard of ratio of doctors to patients, the World Medical Association (WMA) has stated.
“The present situation by international standards, a doctor should be assigned to less than 600 patients but in Nigeria’s case, a doctor attends to over 3,000. So Nigeria needs over 250,000 doctors to cope with the current reality”, World Medical Association President, Osahon Enabulele said at an event organised by the Federated Chapel of the Edo Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, on Thursday.
The WMA chief expressed dissatisfaction that the most populous African country had less than 100,000 doctors, a figure he said was grossly inadequate to meet the doctors-patients ratio.
“There is less than 100,000 registered doctor in Nigeria, let’s say it is 98,000 doctors according to the last update.
“Out of these 98,000, only 50,000 are actually practicing in Nigeria,” Enabulele bemoaned.
There must be political commitment by the Nigerian leaders to meet the Abuja Declaration of dedicating 15 percent of its budget to healthcare provision to have a standard healthcare system, Enabulele stated further.
He decried how political leaders in the country traveled abroad to queue up before seeing less qualified doctors to check blood pressure they could conveniently do Nigeria
He listed lack of funds, inadequate infrastructure, unemployment, workplace conditions, remuneration, brain drain, economy, inflation and ineffective healthcare among others as problems facing Nigeria’s health system.
“Because of these problems senior doctors, consultants are moving out of Nigeria in drove because of greater remuneration,” he said.
This, he said resulted in low quality of healthcare delivery in the country.
He called for improved political commitment, empowered healthcare work, improved working conditions, recognition of value and professional work of the medical practitioners, stop medical tourism for political leaders, make wages to be competitive to change the narrative in the health sector.
