President of Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Tope Osundara has painted the difficult working conditions of medical doctors in Nigeria, describing it as challenging.
The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) had on Saturday, called off its nationwide strike.
Dr. Osundara who spoke in a radio programme, accused the Federal Government of insensitivity to the welfare of doctors.
He lamented the poor state of the health sector in the country, and said Nigeria has exceeded the World Health Organisation (WHO) doctor to patient ratio.
According to him, “Normally, we should have one doctor to 600 patients, but in Nigeria, we have one doctor to about 10,000 patients. This means that the workload is actually challenging and exhausting for doctors.
“And if you divide that figure of one doctor to 10,00 patients, it means that the number of doctors working in Nigeria as of now is just something in the region of 24 to 25, 000.
“That means, if you have 25,000 doctors to take care of 200 million Nigerians, how best do we think those qualities of service rendered can be optimal, and can be of assured quality?
“And it is one of the reasons we are telling government that we have the issue of manpower shortage which we want them to address,” he said.
The NMA President called for improved welfare of doctors of doctors, adding, “we have welfare concerns; we have workload concerns.”
