Nigeria Has One Doctor to 40,000 Patients, Says Senator Tejuoso

…Proposes TruDoc Virtual Clinic to bridge gap

Sunday Ehigiator

The former Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Lanre Tejuoso, has revealed that Nigeria unfortunately has one doctor to 40,000 patients as against the one to 400 doctor-patient ratio recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Speaking with THISDAY recently, he said the huge gap has hampered accessibility to medical services in the country, hence increasing mortality and morbidity; a situation that puts the country’s global healthcare rating at a poor state.

He said: “To address this, we must look for innovations that can distrupt the status quo. The recently established TruDoc 24×7 Virtual Clinic is one innovation that has the capacity to tackle shortage of doctors in Nigeria.

“Apart from accessibility to Nigerian doctors, the virtual clinic can provide patients with the opportunity to have specialist care and direct accessibilty to specialists around the world.

“I welcome the virtual clinic for Nigerian market because of the increased reach for patients to have access to medical doctors all over the world, and not just Nigeria.”

Speaking on some of the challenges in the Nigeria health sector and how the innovation can address it, he said, “Nigeria is a country with about 200 million people, and of course, you must know the density of patients to doctors which the WHO has already prescribed the minimum expectation as one doctor to about 400 or 600 patients.

“However in Nigeria, we have a doctor to about 40,000 patients. Most of our doctors; very educated and skillful, are operating in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as in Dubai. So Nigeria is left with virtually few doctors.”

He said the virtual clinic was a real innovation needed for Nigeria in particular, adding that with this, we can have our doctors back in Nigeria virtually and the patients can have access to specialists in all fields in the country.

On its accessibility, Tejuoso, who also recently launched the ‘President Muhammadu Buhari International Conference Centre and Telemedicine Hall’ at the Federal Medical Center, Abeokuta as one of his constituency projects, said, “The virtual clinic will be positioned in various medical centers in Nigeria.”

“Any Nigerian patient can walk into the clinic and immediately be connected to a specialist anywhere in the world. It could be in the capital city, it could be in Dubai, UK, etc. The advantages are enormous in terms of the reach of the patient to special doctors.

“Nigeria is divided into about 774 local governments, and this is a well spaced location that will ensure proper organised access for all Nigerians, in addition to that, we have about 10,000 poling units which have been created for the purpose of elections,” he added.

Speaking on the sustainability of the innovation as driven by partners, he said, “Our most important partner is the telecommunication company that will provide the bandwidths, which will ensure proper internet services, because most of the communications will be via video call, so we need very perfect bandwidths for that.

“Of course we need the corporation of the association of medical doctors in Nigeria and indeed internationally that will be ready to receive the calls of patients whenever they are appointed.

“Again, we will need a very favourable business environment for investors to ensure that they are able to actually gain their investment back,” he said.