According to the UN, the minimum doctor-patient ratio is 1 doctor per 600 people. There are approximately 180million people in Nigeria. And there are about 35,000 practising doctors in Nigeria. So mathematically speaking, we are running on a deficit of about 250,000 doctors!

Couple that with the exploding birthrate of the Nigerian populace, and the depreciation of Nigerian doctors, well you do the math...

With the way things are going in this country, little wonder why our elite and the wealthy upperclassmen run abroad to seek medical aid at the slightest cough and sneeze, while the poor masses are stuck with dilapidated hospitals and a gross shortage of medical staff.
Not enough effort is put in by the government towards the health and education sector.

While other nations have universities which are completely dedicated to medical research and study, the Nigerian government is well contented with building and funding universities with barely enough to run a standard college of education in a developed country!

The Medical University of South Carolina, USA has six colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dental medicine, and postgraduate health courses which altogether produce hundreds of doctors, nurses, dentists, radiographers, and professional health workers every year alone.

Meanwhile, the University of Medical Science, Ondo (the ONLY Nigerian university dedicated to medical research, by the way) barely graduates 50 medical students per annum.

As cliché as it would be to lay all the blame on the Nigerian government alone, our corrupt educational system is also to blame.
Admissions into the various colleges of medicine in our federal and state universities, which ought to be mainly on merit, are now auctioned off to the highest bidder and the upper-class, leaving the more qualified candidates to bemoan their fate.

The result? The annual churning of unqualified and inefficient "doctors" from our respective universities, ill-prepared to handle the innumerable challenges of the medical profession.

We can only hope and strive for change in this abysmal society of ours, but charity they say, begins at home.

By George Cayman.
FB: George Cayman.
Twitter: CaymanPanda.