Kosiso Anokwuru
The President of National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (NPMCN), Lagos, Prof. Opuboda Lilly-Tariah, has decried poor funding, which he said was impeding the development of the medical institution.
Speaking at the school’s 36th convocation, he described the slow pace of development as a critical challenge to training by the college.
According to him, the challenge of funding was threefold, which includes: teaching hospitals, residency programme, and the college.
His words: “The challenge of funding are those relating to the teaching hospitals, the residency
programme and the college.
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“The teaching hospitals are the training arena of the resident doctors and the workstation of the trainers. Poor funding of the teaching hospitals results in paucity of facilities and poor motivation for trainers and trainees. Consequence of this is the dwindling number of places available for training of resident doctors.
He said: “Funding of the residency programme is also problematic. This has been left to the whims of the institutions. Adequate attention is not paid to sponsorship for examinations, courses and training in other institutions locally and abroad.
“The college needs good funding to be able to meet its mandate. Infrastructural development is still poor. Learning resources are still poorly developed. Funding of college activities is less than satisfactory.”
Prof. Lilly-Tariah further stated that despite the monies generated through subventions from government and its examinations revolving funds, the college still finds it difficult to operate. Hence, they result in periodic increases in examination fees, which makes the resident doctors groan under the weight of increasing fees and dwindling buying power.
He lamented that the implication of this challenge had brought about brain drain in the health sector, while stressing that there was an exodus of trained doctors leaving the shores of the land for greener pastures.
“Today, the country is faced with another brain drain. This is a worrisome situation. The effect is our most experienced hands and our brightest minds are being drained away. We are thus losing both our present and our future. The reasons these happen are all well known. These include but not limited to lack of jobs, lack of job security, poor pay and poor facilities for practice,” he said.
To this end, the president tasked the three tiers of government to create an enabling environment for the practice of medicine in order for the college to realize its core objective.
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