Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, has said that 55,000 doctors are currently registered in Nigeria.
The Minister, who disclosed this on Channels Television’s Politics Today Programme, said though there are 300,000 health professionals in the country, only 55,000 are Doctors.
He said “We did an assessment and discovered we have 85,000 to 90,000 registered Nigerian doctors.
However, not all of them are in the country. Some are in Diaspora, especially in the US and UK. But there are 55,000 licensed doctors in the country.
“There are about 300,000 health professionals working in Nigeria today in all cadres. I am talking about doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and others”
The Minister lamented that brain drain syndrome had robbed the health sector of its best to expand the training scheme and motivate others who chose to stay back and serve their fatherland.
Pate said the health professionals in the country are insufficient interms of the skills mix. “Can you believe most of the highly skilled professional doctors are in Lagos, Abuja and a few urban centres? There is huge distribution issue.
“The population of doctors overall is about 7,600 doctors in Lagos and 4,700 or thereabout in Abuja. The doctor-to-population ratio in Abuja is 14.7 per 10,000 population. These are numbers that you can verify. In Lagos, it is about 4.6, even though the average is 2.2 by 10,000”.
-9News Nigeria.
