The Senate Committee on Health on Monday revealed that Nigeria has only 35,000 practicing Medical Doctors out of the registered 72,000.
Lamentations to these effects were made by Senators and some stakeholders in the health sector during a Public Hearing session on Bills seeking for establishments of health related institutions and Council and Development Fund organised by the Senate Committee on Health.
Speaking after the public hearing of the bill seeking for the establishment of Federal University of Health Sciences in Otukpo, Benue State, Senator Abba Moro, who sponsored the bill, said the University was very necessary in joining other ones across the country for training of medical doctors whose number in the country presently is abysmally low compared to large population seeking for healthcare services.
Moro said: “From available statistics, we have 72,000 registered medical doctors in Nigeria.
“And out of this, only 35,000 are practicing.
“The implication is that only that number is superintending over the health of over 200 million Nigerians.
“This is ridiculous for a country in the 21st century.
“It is scary.
“By 2017, JAMB (Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board) declared that of all the Nigerian children that applied for medicine and other allied programmes, they could only admit 20 per cent, meaning that 80 per cent of Nigerians waiting to read medicine were left out because they don’t have space.
“This is what the University of Health Sciences will bridge.
“Create more spaces for Nigerian students to read medicine and other allied personnel in to the medical market.
“I think this bill is very significant.
“Establishment of the institution is also very important.
“At the end, Nigerians will benefit from it and it will improve our health sector.”
Moro added that though the bill was sponsored, considered and passed during the 8th National Assembly, but was unable to be transmitted to the President for assent before the expiration of tenure of the Assembly.
Making similar submission, the Director/Head, Family Health Department of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Dr. Awas Kolo, said as a result of inadequate manpower in the sector and required facilities/equipments, high rate of maternal and pre-natal mortality in the country have remained so within the last 10 years.
According to Kolo, while the country records about 50,000 maternal mortality on yearly basis, 39 out of 1,000 women die at the pre-natal stage.
She said: “These statistics show that there has been no improvement and that we are not serious as a country in tackling the problem headlong.”
In his remarks, the Chairman of the committee, Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe (APC-Kwara Central), appealed for synergy among all health practitioners as no single profession in the sector can do it alone.
Oloriegbe promised that the five bills will be thoroughly worked upon by the committee in bringing about improvement in health care service delivery in the country.
The other bills considered were Advance Health Care Development Fund (Establishment etc) Bill 2020; Federal Tertiary Teaching Hospital Development Tax Fund (Establishment) Bill 2020; Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (Repeal and Re-enactment), Bill 2020; and National Maternal and Pre -natal Deaths Surveillance (Establishment) 2020.