The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) is grappling with a fresh shortage of junior resident doctors, raising concerns about the hospital’s capacity to provide timely and efficient medical care.
Departments including internal medicine, the neonatal unit, haematology, and paediatrics are operating without junior resident doctors, BusinessDay has learned.
The dwindling number of resident doctors, attributed to brain drain, poor working conditions, and inadequate payment, has placed increased pressure on the hospital’s existing workforce.
Patients and medical staff are feeling the strain, as longer wait times and heavier workloads threaten to compromise healthcare delivery.
Inyene Obong Akpan, a junior medical doctor in a tweet shared on Thursday suggested that there seems to be no alarm over the worsening state of the workforce in one of the largest tertiary hospitals in the country.
She expressed concern that there is a significant decline in the number of doctors pursuing residency programmes in Nigeria.
She believes it is a serious challenge that requires urgent action, suggesting that widespread complacency is hindering progress.
“We keep attacking doctors. We are in trouble. LUTH as large as it is doesn’t have a junior resident doctor in internal medicine at least for the time I was there. The masses don’t understand when we keep shouting, striking, and clamouring. We need to hold our government accountable,” Akpan stated.
Wasiu Adeyemo, chief medical director of the hospital last week raised an alarm that the hospital was inching close to chronic understaffing during the 2025 budget defense session with the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.
He said the rate of daily resignations recorded is likely to leave government investment in medical infrastructure without the manpower to operate them.
The CMD could not comment at the time BusinessDay reached out on Friday.
Nigeria’s healthcare workforce of approximately 400,000 serves a population of around 220 million.
It has a current ratio of four doctors per 10,000 people and 88 nurses per 100,000, according to the Federal Ministry of Health.
These figures fall short of the World Health Organisation minimum standard of 2.5 medical staff including physicians, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 people for adequate primary care coverage.
According to a study projecting Nigeria’s population to grow from 178.5 million in 2014 to 272.5 million in 2030, Nigeria needs an average of 515,668 doctors, nurses, and midwives to meet its health demand.
The estimated need is 124,394 doctors and 391,274 nurses and midwives. The study found a deficit of between 30.86 percent and 33.45 percent for doctors and between 26.09 percent and 29.5 percent for nurses and midwives.
Reacting to Akpan’s tweet, Oji, a lifestyle and health specialist said: “The government needs to make residency attractive enough for doctors because the real crisis is staying in a dysfunctional system, underpaid and overworked. Ultimately, this is far more catastrophic for patients than doctors.”
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