Lagos State Government has revealed that the state needs an additional 33,000 doctors and another 33,000 nurses to provide adequate medical care to residents.

The state’s Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, who disclosed this yesterday during a media briefing to mark the second year of the second term of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in office, stated that there are 7,000 doctors in the state, but the state needs an additional 33,000.

Abayomi, however, said that the state government is working to bridge the gap through the state’s University of Medicine and Health (UMH), saying: “Within five years, UMH will produce about 2,500 healthcare workers yearly in Lagos State. Other cadres will include laboratory scientists.”

According to the commissioner, only 1,252,959 have taken up a health insurance policy with the state health insurance agency, which is 4.17 per cent of the registered population, while 419 health facilities are providing services under the health insurance scheme.

He was optimistic that the new mandatory nature of the state health insurance act would significantly scale up the size of the pool of funds for the State Health Insurance Scheme.

Abayomi, who disclosed that the New Massey Street 150-bed Children’s Specialist Referral Hospital, being constructed in Lagos Island, is 70 per cent completed, the 280-bed Ojo General Hospital and Staff Quarters in Iba, Ojo, is 75 per cent completed, while the Mental Health Institute in Epe is 65 per cent completed. He said that all three health facilities would be commissioned by April 2026.

The commissioner, who also revealed that 135,224 residents are living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), said that the state government had engaged over 100 religious leaders as HIV and AIDS ambassadors, adding that the state government had provided free screening for 154,228 patients for cervical cancer and treatment of 8,613 with thermal ablation.

He also said that prostate cancer screenings were done for 300 men. Abayomi, who also said that the state government had screened 312,927 persons for hypertension and diabetes, disclosed that in the state, with a population of 30 million people, there is an estimated hypertension prevalence of 20 per cent, and 70 per cent of them are unaware of the disease.

Besides, he revealed that the obesity prevalence in Lagos State is 12 per cent, while diabetes prevalence is six per cent, with 50 per cent of them unaware.