Lagos State Government has said that it currently faces a deficit of 30,000 doctors and a significant shortage of nurses, pharmacists, dentists, laboratory scientists, and other allied health professionals.

The state’s Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, who stated this, yesterday, during the official handover of key medical infrastructure to contractors for conversion into modern academic facilities, said that government’s response to the severe shortage of human resources for health, exacerbated by the sustained outbound migration of medical professionals, necessitated the conversion of some facilities to modern academic facilities.

Abayomi said that the expansion was part of a broader two-pronged strategy approved by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to mitigate the crisis, saying that the first approach is to produce more healthcare professionals by increasing students’ intake, which necessitates a substantial expansion of tertiary education infrastructure.

“The government has approved a phased expansion of infrastructure to accommodate an increased intake of students in medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, and allied health sciences. Our target is to scale up yearly student admissions from 200 to 2,500 over the next five years,” Abayomi stated. He said the second approach is to ensure that the students receive quality training, requiring accreditation from regulatory bodies.

To achieve this, he explained that three critical requirements must be met: adequate space for training, a sufficient number of academic instructors, and access to a diverse patient population for hands-on clinical training.

The commissioner, while expressing gratitude to Sanwo-Olu and his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, commended their swift response to the crisis. In his remarks, the state’s Commissioner for Tertiary Education, Tolani Sule, praised the initiative as a vital step towards addressing the human capital deficit in the health sector.

He said, “Lagos is land-constrained. So, we must maximise existing facilities. The Ministry of Health has graciously repurposed underutilised assets to expand medical education infrastructure.” He re-affirmed the state’s commitment to improving health education.

The Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University (LASU), Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, stressed that the expansion project is crucial for securing accreditation from regulatory bodies.

Also, the Chief Medical Director of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, described the project as a long-overdue response to Lagos’ growing healthcare needs. General Manager of LASIAMA, Adenike Adekanbi, assured that her agency would ensure high-quality project execution. (The Guardian)