The Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of Teaching Hospitals have said that the tertiary health hospitals are facing threats of becoming empty as doctors, nurses, and other skilled health workers leave in their numbers due to lack of remuneration and poor pay packages despite the federal government investment in health infrastructure.
The Chief Medical Director (CMD), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Professor Wasiu Adeyemo, and the Chief Medical Director (CMD), University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Abiodun, and others raised the alarm at the 2025 budget defence session before the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.
Speaking, the CMD, LUTH, Professor Adeyemo informed the Committee that the rate at which medical workers are leaving the country is alarming, hence the need to act fast to address the situation.
He said, “People resign, retire, or not even retire, resign almost every day. Yes. In the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty. We need to do something about the remuneration of all the healthcare workers.“ Otherwise, government is putting a lot of money into infrastructure, and we are going to have empty hospitals.
The major reason why people leave is for economic reasons. Consultants are earning less than $1,000.”Giving details of the hospital’s 2024 budget performance, they were informed that they had a total budget of N19.2 billion, out of which personnel has N13.57 billion and a total overhead of N33.2 million.
He added, “In terms of performance and utilisation, total overhead was 100 per cent as of December for the total personnel, 91 per cent performance, but for the capital project, 45 per cent. So outstanding is 55 per cent. November and December are released today; we would cover maybe about 85 per cent”.
Prof. Adeyemo, while responding to an observation by members of the Committee on Personnel Performance, said that they had 95 per cent personnel performance because of payment of benefits and other activities because of resignation and retirements in the year.
The CMD added, “For the proposal for 2025, a total budget of 32.7 billion, out of which a total overhead that is better than that of last year. Personnel is 20.3. I think it was 13 last year”.
Similarly, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Jesse Abiodun, lamented the delay in the release of budgeted funds to the hospital, which he said has adversely affected its operations.
Giving the details of UCH’s 2024 budget, he said it has a capital appropriation of N5,593,110,394. He, however, informed us that only 38 per cent of the funds were released, leaving a balance of 72 per cent.He said, “We have 72% left.
Yes, we actually were among the last people to be batched for payment, and the payment started coming in actually this December. We were able to even utilise this 38 per cent because we had already done the cash plan before the release.“For 2025, that is on page one. So for the capital, we are proposing N4, 387, 763,661 for capital. This is a bit less than what we had in 2024.
And that’s because of this envelope system. What we’re given, we have to work with it.“The overhead, we have N690,006,464 only. There’s a bit of an increase over that of 2024 because of the outrageous bills we are getting from Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company”.
In his remark earlier, the Chairman, House Committee on Health Institutions, Hon. Patrick Umoh, charged the CMDs of University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) to be thorough in their presentations to provide a clear picture of their situations.He said,
“The reality is that you must extract the proposal made by Mr President as it affects your medical centre. It should be part of your budget, your presentation.
The report of the 2024 budget performance and 2025 budget proposal is given provisional approval for now”.Hon. Umeh lamented the precarious situation facing tertiary health institutions in the country.
The chairman ruled that, while the committee could not attend to all the health institutions on the day, it would collect all their correspondences and submissions from the outstanding teaching hospitals to work on for further deliberations.