Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has said the State is facing a deficit of about 40,000 doctors and another 40,000 nurses, while its health sector requires at least N100bn, above current budgetary provisions to meet the needs of its growing population.
Tripod times reports that Governor Sanwo-olu disclosed that more than 1.5 million residents had enrolled in the state’s health insurance scheme, Ilera Eko, as the government intensified efforts to build a sustainable healthcare system on Thursday in Lagos.
He described that the two biggest challenges confronting the state’s healthcare system is the shortage of health workers and funding, He warns that donor funding for disease control was shrinking.
“Lagos needs about 40,000 doctors to serve this population properly. We have about 7,000. We need roughly 40,000 more nurses. Every doctor in Lagos today is, in effect, doing the work of 10,” he said.
Despite the challenges, the Governor said the State has started tackling the workforce shortage through aggressive recruitment, better welfare packages, and plans to set up a University of Medicine and Health Sciences.“
We have recruited aggressively, and last month opened clinical recruitment across all twenty-nine of our secondary facilities.“We have built accommodation for health workers. We are improving conditions to slow the departures and, increasingly, to attract colleagues back,” he said.
The Governor while speaking on health insurance,said the state’s compulsory social health insurance policy had continued to expand coverage since the domestication of the National Health Insurance Authority Act.“Donor financing, which supported much of our disease control for two decades, is contracting sharply and will not return in its old form.
”He added, “The second gap is money. There is a shortfall of at least N100bn between what our health budget provides and what this system genuinely requires.
“Today, more than one and a half million Lagosians are enrolled in Ilera Eko.“As at the end of May this year, the figure stood at 1,502,994. More than half are women.“And utilisation is rising, which tells us something important: that coverage is translating into actual care and not merely into cards in wallets,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu also stated that the government is deploying technology to improve healthcare delivery via the Lagos Smart Health Information Platform, which is currently being rolled out across public health institutions.
