Doctors, NMA, Lagos, LASUTH

Nigeria Medical Association. Photo: NMA

The Nigeria Medical Association, Akwa Ibom State chapter, has decried the shortage of medical personnel in the state.

The NMA urged the state government to deliberately establish at least seven medical training institutions to address the growing workforce gap.

The association’s chairman, Prof. Aniekan Peter, raised the concern while briefing journalists in Uyo on Tuesday as part of activities marking the association’s Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference.

He lamented that the state had consistently failed to meet its employment targets for medical workers, stressing that urgent measures were needed to bridge the shortfall.

“If there is vacancies for 100,000 teachers in the state, I’m sure you will find them immediately, but recently the State governor, Umo Eno approved employment for 400 doctors and we couldn’t get them. It means that there’s something wrong somewhere.

“We were looking for 700 nurses in the first time and we couldn’t get until we relax some of the criteria before we were able to get the number. So it’s time as a people to begin to refocus and that’s why our AGM is all about: Refocusing our attention for the future of health care for Akwa Ibom,” Peter said.

According to him, the state government must begin to see medical education as an investment rather than a burden if it hopes to strengthen its healthcare system.

While commending Governor Umo Eno for approving the establishment of a medical school at Akwa Ibom State University, Peter said the initiative was commendable but insufficient, noting that states such as Delta already have multiple medical training institutions.

“We appreciate the governor for the approval granted to the Akwa Ibom State University to start doing medicine and other medical courses. But for Akwa Ibom State that is one over four, it’s still a failure, just 25%. So we thank the governor for opening the first medical school in the state; other states like Delta already had four,” he said.

“Medicine is no more a course, it’s an empowerment and any state or country that doesn’t recognize this will not get it right. If Akwa Ibom wants to be one of the states to be reckoned with, we must see medical education as an empowerment; we must have at least seven medical schools in this state.

“So that any of our children that wants to read medicine or surgery can have admission and the number that want to be nurses, physiotherapists will not be a problem and by God’s grace we can do it,” he added.

Peter further argued that the state already possesses infrastructure that could be upgraded into medical training institutions.

“We have our general hospital at Ikot Ekpene that can be a focus of a university, we have our general hospital at Eket that can be another focus of another university. We can even train them in different medical centres; we have the Ibom Specialist Hospital that can stand alone as a university,” he said.