President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the upgrade of the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja, Kogi State, to a Teaching Hospital.
The Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Lokoja, Prof. Akinwumi Olayemi, on Tuesday, disclosed this in a joint press conference at the Adankolo campus of the institution in Lokoja.
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Olayemi said the President made the pronouncement in a letter of approval signed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.
In the letter, Mustapha said, “I am directed to refer to your letter dated February 10, on the upgrade and takeover of FMC Lokoja to a Federal Teaching Hospital, 2023.
“I wish to convey the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari for the upgrading of the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja to a Federal Teaching Hospital, Lokoja”.
Explaining further why the university collaborated with the management of the FMC to upgrade it to a teaching hospital, the Vice Chancellor said there are about 80,000 registered medical practitioners on the Register of Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria as at May 2022.
He said, “Out of this number, about 40,000 medical doctors are actively practising in Nigeria. By World Health Organisation standard, one doctor is to 100 patients, but in Nigeria, it is one doctor to more than 4,000 patients.”
He said this is grossly inadequate and unacceptable especially in a developing country like Nigeria.
He further said research conducted in recent time shows that in the next 10 years, Kogi state medical centres and hospitals will experience great inactivity of medical doctors.
“About 98 per cent of students of Kogi state origin that applied for Medicine and Surgery with outstanding performance in Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and Post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in universities within the catchment areas of Kogi state are vehemently denied admissions to read medicine and surgery in those universities.
According to him, in most cases, some of them ended up reading single honours courses such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and so on.
“It is on the premise of the above denials that Federal University Lokoja established its own College of Health Sciences to address the seeming problem. The University was aware of the enormity of the cost implication of establishing Medicine and Surgery especially in terms of adequate and qualified professionals, availability of teaching hospital, functional laboratories, hostels, library and so on.
“This was the reason that the Management of the University approached the management of the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja to seek collaboration and conversion of the Medical Centre to Teaching Hospital.”
In his contribution, the Chief Medical Director of FMC, Lokoja, Dr. Olatunde Alabi, assured that the hospital had adequate infrastructure and manpower to assume the new status.
According to him, Buhari has given them the complement to ensure that the partnership between the university is sustained.