The National Universities Commission, NUC, has said
that Nigeria needs about three hundred thousand medical doctors to meet the doctor-patient ratio of one to six hundred recommended by the World Health Organisation.
The Executive Secretary, NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, announced this in Bayelsa yesterday.
Rasheed said the current “doctor-patient ratio in the country stands at one to three thousand, five hundred stressing that this was among the several challenges bedeviling the nation’s health sector.
According to him, the nation’s medical schools produce about three thousand doctors yearly and this is not enough to achieve the WHO standards to deliver on health care services.
The NUC boss further noted that medical tourism embarked upon by patients seeking “robust health care systems of other countries” had also significantly affected the Nigeria’s health care system.
He said there was an urgent need for huge investment in health education and health care services by all stakeholders to mitigate the acute shortage of manpower and services in the sector.
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