doctors to meet World Health Organisation
(WHO) standard, a professor of medicine and
chairman, Association of Colleges of Medicine of
Nigeria, Folashade Ogunsola, has said.
Mrs. Ogunsola disclosed this at the opening of a
three-day Capacity Development Programme for
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
(MBBS) Academic Staff in Nigerian Universities
organised by National Universities Commission
on Monday in Abuja.
According to her, WHO’s ratio for any country
to have enough doctors for its population is
1:600 (one doctor of every 600 persons).
“We will need about 237, 000 medical doctors
and we have about 35,000 working in the
country today.
“We have trained more than that, many of them
have left the country while many others are in
different professions — banking, music and so
on.
“Medicine is about life; it is the duty of the
medical schools to produce people with
competences; skills to manage patients.
“Assuming no doctor leaves this country after
being trained; going by the number coming
from our medical schools every year, it will take
us about 100 years to have the number of
doctors we need.’’
Mrs. Ogunsola, who lectures at the College of
Medicine, University of Lagos, said that aside
that number, the quality of doctors was crucial.
According to her, medical schools have quotas
at present — the number of students they can
admit because they can only train with the
facilities they have.