2,500 Nigerians to 1 doctor, reveals new report

A new official report suggests Nigeria has only one doctor for 2,572 citizens. That’s a density of 40 doctors per 100,000 Nigerians, says the report measuring the profile of Nigeria’s health workforce, despite recorded increase in the number of registered doctors.Density of nurses and midwives fell 3% since 2009 despite slight grow in absolute numbers […]

A new official report suggests Nigeria has only one doctor for 2,572 citizens.

That’s a density of 40 doctors per 100,000 Nigerians, says the report measuring the profile of Nigeria’s health workforce, despite recorded increase in the number of registered doctors.
Density of nurses and midwives fell 3% since 2009 despite slight grow in absolute numbers of individual health professionals in those cadre, the report noted.
In 2012, there were 249,566 registered nurses and midwives combined, according to the report, published in June and released Monday in Abuja.
But each 100,000 Nigerians were served by just 87 nurses, down from the 90 nurses for a similar population size in 2009.
The densities are considered high for sub-Saharan Africa with an average 73 nurses per 100,000, but they rank Nigeria lower than many middle-income countries.
The figures were released as the second national conference of human resource for health opened in Abuja to consider boosting the quantity and quality of health personnel in a bid to ensure universal health coverage.

Minimum threshold

The World Health Organisation recommends 2.3 doctors, nurses and midwives per 1,000 population as minimum threshold of health worker density, according to WHO representative in Nigeria, Dr Rui Vaz Gama.
But a recent assessment by WHO found 36 countries in Africa face a shortage of some 820,000 doctors, nurses and midwives combined.
The shortages are worsened by migration, inadequate remuneration and incentives, improper distribution of health workers and under-investment in production of sufficient health workers, according to Dr Rui Vaz Gama, country representative for WHO in Nigeria.
Some 864 doctors migrated abroad from Nigeria last year alone, suggesting a spike after the trend of migrations stayed lower than the 3,500 migrations recorded in 2007.
Globalised production
In his address, health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu said fluctuations in health personnel were not spared the influence of globalisation in efforts to retain healthworkers.
“Some of our Nigerian brothers and sisters trained by Nigerian money are outside, but we can get them back, if we can pay for their services.”
Meanwhile the 249,566 nurses and midwives registered in 2012 indicates 3% decline from figures recorded in 2009, shrinking their density to 148 nurses and midwives for every 100,000 Nigerian.
Mike Egboh, country director for Partnership for Transforming Health Systems II (PATHS2), which supported the publication of the report, said Nigeria needed to build on the findings of its first conference and focus on humans rather than facilities.
“We must seriously start to find solutions to the attitude of health workers at all levels. We have to get potent, performing health workers but how do we get out those who aren’t performing?” he said.
Stunted ratios
Among the largest surprising ratios of health workers are:
•One senior health extension worker to 4,000 Nigerians
•One junior health extension worker to 6,000 Nigerians
•One dispensing optician for every one million Nigerian
•One speech therapist for every 17 million Nigerian