Statistics revealed that the density of physicians to patient in Nigeria is 4 Doctors to ten thousand patients and 16.1 nurse, midwives to same numbers of patients.
The statistic has fallen short of the World Health Organisations recommendation of a Doctor to six hundred patients and critical threshold of 23 Doctors, Nurses and Midwives to ten thousand patients.
To address this gap the Executive Director, Project Pink Blue, Runcie Chidebe advised the Nigerian Government to declare a state of emergency on its health sector to address the shortage of healthcare workforce in the country.
Chidebe who made the call in Abuja at the launch of Upgrade Oncology to support Government’s initiative in Cancer control said Nigeria needs about one hundred and fifty thousand Doctors as well as similar number of nurses by the year 2030 to remain afloat.
Some stakeholders spoke on how they intend to work inline with National Cancer Control Plan 2018-2022 especially in the area of training Oncology pharmacist, cancer doctors and cancer nurses to complement government’s efforts.
It is a well known facts that Cancer is responsible for about 78,000 deaths in Nigeria every year with an estimated 102,000 new cases annually.
