The Federal Government recently approved the disbursement of N110 billion to 18 medical institutions in the country to expand their medical, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing programmes. The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, announced the disbursement in Abuja while inaugurating a 12-man ministerial committee on the TETFund High Impact Intervention Project for Medical Schools Rehabilitation across the nation’s six geopolitical zones. The beneficiary institutions include Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; University of Lagos; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; University of Benin; Imo State University, Owerri; University of Medical Sciences, Ondo; University of Ibadan; Benue State University, Makurdi; Umar Musa Yar’Adua University, Katsina; University of Nigeria, Nsukka; University of Calabar; Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi; University of Jos; University of Ilorin; University of Maiduguri; Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto; and Gombe State University.
The committee, chaired by Prof. Suleiman Alabi, Chairman of the Association of Provosts of Colleges of Medicine, is tasked with ensuring project adherence, monitoring fund usage, and maintaining detailed records. It will also engage stakeholders, including medical school administrators, faculty, students, and health bodies, to ensure effective implementation of the disbursed money. We charge to committee to live up to its responsibility at this critical time in the nation’s history where the education and heath sectors are yet to wriggle out of funding crisis.
Dr. Alausa said the N110billion intervention fund included N70billion for the rehabilitation of medical schools in Nigerian universities. In five years time, the federal government would have invested N1.5 trillion in the country’s medical education. According to him, each university would receive about N4billion, including N750 million for hostel construction, to support eight simulation labs across the zones and increase enrolment in medical sciences.
The TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono, noted that the overseeing committee would work towards strengthening medical schools’ infrastructure, such as lecture theatres and laboratories, to produce more doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists, which, in turn, enhance capacity to produce more doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists for the nation.” The medical sector in Nigeria is one of the worst hit by brain drain involving Nigerian professionals. There is an urgent need to fill the gap caused by the emigration of our medical doctors to foreign lands in search of greener pastures. Over 16,000 medical doctors are reported to have left Nigeria in the last 5-7 years. The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, put the current doctor-to-population ratio at 3.9 per 10,000 in Nigeria. Also, thousands of talented nurses and midwives have migrated to foreign countries, adding to the crisis in the country’s health sector.
Most of the Nigerian migrant health professionals have cited economic opportunity, better working conditions, more advanced training, and better research environments abroad for leaving the country. Professor Pate estimated the cost of training one medical doctor in excess of $21,000, which has made the loss of over 16,000 Nigerian medical doctors a colossal fiscal loss to the nation, which has laboured to raise them. It has also significantly affected the health care delivery system.
Nigeria’s current doctor-to-population ratio of 3.9 per 10,000 is unacceptable. It is far below the global minimum. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended a doctor-to-population ratio of 1 doctor per 600 people. The federal government has a big responsibility managing its remaining health workforce to keep Nigerian hospitals running efficiently. The health authorities should urgently create fresh manpower to boost healthcare delivery in the country. The global health workforce shortage is approximately 18 million, and Western nations have turned to Third World countries, including Nigeria, to tap from their reservoir of health professionals thereby depleting their workforce.
It is commendable that the federal government wants to enhance its health workforce by expanding its medical programmes in selected universities. It should as well enhance the working conditions of our doctors, nurses and other health workers. Doing so will go a long way to curb the exodus of our doctors and nurses to foreign lands. Government will do everything possible to make our doctors stay and work in the country. We must stop losing our capable hands to foreign lands because of competitive wages and better conditions of service abroad. Let our health workers be adequately motivated through competitive wages.