NMA Wants More Personnel In Health Facilities

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has called on government at all levels to strengthen the human resource in the healthcare system to ease delivery of adequate healthcare services to the people.
The Chairman of the association, Rivers State Chapter, Dr Dennis Datonye Alasia who made the call at an event in Port Harcourt recently, regretted that the number of healthcare personnel across all strata including doctors, nurses, community health workers among others was not commensurate with the number of patients in the health facilities.
Alasia said “in some health facilities, you have just one doctor who is expected to attend to thousands of patients. If we look at the ratio of the number of doctors we have and the number of people that they need to save, we are probably at the ratio of one doctor is to 5,000 to 6,000 people when we should be looking at one doctor is to 600 or thereabout and we don’t even have the capacity to fill that gap”.
He said, for instance, a state like Rivers State, we need to have about 10,000 doctors but if you put together the total number we have from the last Strategic Health Human.
Resource both at the federal, state and private systems, we are just about 1,700 doctors. This is a huge gap that even if we produce 200 doctors every year, you can imagine how long it will take us to get to that point.
It means that we must get a system that would enable us bridge the gap”.
Alasia also noted with dismay, the high level of unemployment in the sector even in the faces of in adequate personnels to tackle the varied and various health needs of the people.
According to the state NMA boss, there is also the lack of motivation in the system which he said had contributed to the migration of Nigerian medical doctors to other countries maintaining that it has become imperative that more options, opportunities and re-orientation be given to doctors to get the best out of them.
Alasia further regretted the limited opportunities given to those who opt to advance in the careers as well as the disparity in salary structure.
“As a country, we are losing a lot because of those inadequacies. And so, one of the most important thing for us to strengthen in the healthcare system is the human resources as this will help us overcome the sector’s limitations”, he said.

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