Upcoming Lagos medical varsity will produce 1,500 doctors year-on-year — Sanwo-Olu

The Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has said his government will set up a medical university to strengthen the state’s medical workforce and address the exodus of health professionals abroad.

Sanwo-Olu said the planned medical university to be named  ”Lagos State Medical University” would graduate about 1,500 doctors yearly, urging other States to emulate Lagos.

The Governor said the approval process was already underway and being fine-tuned with the National Universities Commission (NUC).

The governor disclosed this at the unveiling of the Femi Gbajabiamila General Hospital located on Iyun Road, Surulere.

“Lagos State will be setting up, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Universities Commission, another university that will be called Lagos State Medical University, before the end of this year. This is a strategic intervention moment for us.

“Why are we setting up a health or medical university? This is to solve two problems: We found out, working with the Federal Ministry of Health, that we need to scale up very aggressively all of our training and the youth that require to be trained in everything within our health space.

“We cannot sit back and fold our arms like a government that cannot intervene, and so we will, as a State that is leading the pack and we hope that other States will take the initiative, set up this university to be able to scale and have 1,000 to 1,500 doctors being graduated on a year-on-year basis, and will also stem, in our view, the risk of our medical personnel leaving our country.

“We are going to ensure that we provide the best facilities to be able to retain our best talents here,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu said the intervention became necessary following the advice by the federal authorities that states needed to scale up the number of medical personnel being produced to bridge the gap of the shortage of medical health practitioners due to exodus of medical professionals.

He commended the Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, for upgrading the popular Femi Gbajabiamila Clinic to an ultramodern multi-floor 80-bed hospital.