Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, says the state needs about 40,000 additional doctors, another 40,000 nurses and at least N100bn more in health funding to meet the healthcare needs of its growing population.
THE WHISTLER had reported that the Federal Ministry of Health’s Q1 2026 health sector performance report showed Lagos recorded the highest skilled birth attendance rate in the country at 100 per cent.
Despite the performance, the state recorded 50 maternal deaths in the first quarter of 2026, up from 26 in the previous quarter. It also recorded the country’s highest neonatal death toll at 231, an increase from 127 in Q4 2025.
The report also showed Lagos spent N180.99bn on health in 2025 out of a N216.71bn budget, the highest health expenditure by any state during the period.
Sanwo-Olu, while declaring open the second Eko Health Convention at the Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday, said the shortage of health workers and widening funding gap remain the biggest challenges facing the state’s health sector.
He warned that declining donor support for disease control programmes has further increased pressure on government resources.
“Lagos needs about 40,000 doctors to serve this population properly. We have about 7,000. We need roughly 40,000 more nurses. Every doctor in Lagos today is, in effect, doing the work of 10.
“The second gap is money. There is a shortfall of at least N100bn between what our health budget provides and what this system genuinely requires.
“Donor financing, which supported much of our disease control for two decades, is contracting sharply and will not return in its old form,” Sanwo-Olu said.
He said the state government has stepped up recruitment, improved welfare packages for health workers and is pursuing plans to establish a University of Medicine and Health Sciences to strengthen the workforce.
“We have recruited aggressively, and last month opened clinical recruitment across all 29 of our secondary facilities. We have built accommodation for health workers. We are improving conditions to slow the departures and, increasingly, to attract colleagues back,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu also said the state’s compulsory health insurance scheme, Ilera Eko, has continued to expand access to healthcare following the domestication of the National Health Insurance Authority Act.
According to him, more than 1.5 million Lagos residents have enrolled in the scheme, with women accounting for over half of the beneficiaries.
“Today, more than one and a half million Lagosians are enrolled in Ilera Eko. As at the end of May this year, the figure stood at 1,502,994. More than half are women.
“Utilisation is rising, which tells us something important: that coverage is translating into actual care and not merely into cards in wallets,” he said.
The governor said reforms such as Ilera Eko, the health districts and the state’s digital health platform were designed to endure beyond his administration.
“We have kept our promises. Now we are building the systems that will keep them long after us,” he said.
(The Whistler)