Kwara state government has expressed serious concern over its inability to recruit Medical Doctors to effectively attend to thousands of patients across the government hospitals in the sixteen local governments in the state, despite attractive salaries and allowances compared with Federal workers.
Executive Secretary,Kwara state Hospital Management Board.Dr AbdulRaheem AbdulMalik who said this on Tuesday at the quarterly ministerial press briefing of the state government in ilorin attributed the development to Japa syndrome, and blunt refusal of the Doctors to work in the rural areas.
AbdulMalik said that, currently, there are 89 Medical Doctors in the state, instead of about 200 that are needed, adding that a female medical doctor who was recently recruited and posted to Offa General Hospital, didn’t resume one day.
” After His Excellency increased the salary, 3 of them that left came back ,so we have 89 right now,we are still expecting more “he said
He nevertheless said that in order to mitigate the impact of dearth of medical doctors in the state,the government is developing an Application whereby patients would be able to track the time a particular Doctor would be on duty, instead of waiting endlessly often times,as being currently experienced by some patients in the government hospitals.
He further said that,in order to solve this fundamental problem, the government is working on sponsoring medical students at the university, with the understanding and agreement that they would serve the state after graduation to replicate the amount expended on them during their academic career.
According to him:The challenges we have mostly are the rural areas,we are trying to apply what is going on in the western world here while working with the resources available for the state. on recruitment .
“We have presented prerequisites to the Excellency on actually harvesting this selector from medical schools, so the state sponsors you as a student for maybe a year or two years, you pay back by working for the state for those two years the state has invested in you.”
“That means we will continue to have a cycle of students, so the government sponsors you for three years, you work for the for three years before you Japa so that way there is the closing of the gap for medical doctors, of course that would kick in about 3 to 4 years because we are starting from their clinical level which is 400 level.” he said
AbdulMalik however said that the state government is not as desperate for the nurses, saying ,”we are not as desperate for the nurses as we are for Doctors because the social circumstances favour nurses staying in the country because most of them are women and their movements depends on where their husband is stationed. Some do Japa but we are not as desperate.”
For her part,Commissioner for Communications Mrs Bola Olukoju who coordinated the ministerial press briefing express the commitment of the state government to tackle kidnappings and banditry in the state with effective synergy with security agencies,and other local security forces.
