Lagos has a shortage of health workers and needs 40,000 doctors and another 40,000 nurses to address the healthcare deficit in Nigeria’s commercial capital, says Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

Mr Sanwo-Olu disclosed this while speaking at the opening of the second Eko Health Convention in Lagos on Thursday. According to him, the state currently has about 7,000 doctors in its workforce.

“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,” Mr Sanwo-Olu said.

Speaking further, the governor noted that more than 1.5 million residents had enrolled in Lagos’ health insurance scheme, Ilera Eko, highlighting that the state would also need at least N100 billion to upgrade its healthcare system.

“The second gap is money. There is a shortfall of at least N100 billion between what our health budget provides and what this system genuinely requires. Donor financing, which supported much of our disease control for two decades, is contracting sharply and will not return to its old form.

“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,” Mr Sanwo-Olu stated.

He, however, confirmed that his administration has started to tackle the problem, revealing that the government has begun to recruit workers into the healthcare sector across the state.

“We have recruited aggressively, and last month opened clinical recruitment across all 29 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,” Mr Sanwo-Olu said.