Osinbajo, Obasanjo, others lament poor healthcare delivery

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has lamented the brain drain in the country’s health sector.
Osinbajo spoke at the 60th anniversary of the University Teaching Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
He said the brain drain in public institutions must be reversed to ensure the return of the country’s best doctors and other professionals.
He, however, assured that said there is hope for the UCH to regain its old glory and be ranked among the best in the world.
He promised that the hospital would soon receive a Federal Government fund through the sovereign wealth fund for it’s upgrading.
Osinbajo said: “The UCH is one of the eight initial tertiary health facilities that the Federal Government would be upgrading through the investment of the sovereign wealth fund. Soon the hospital would get its own funding.
“The 2016 capital stand on N1.3trillion is the highest in the nation’s history. Yet we are still a long way from adequately dealing with the massive infrastructure deficit. We have to seek greater private sector spending.”
The vice president disclosed that for the first time in two decades, Nigeria had dedicated 30 per cent of its total budget to infrastructure.
The anniversary also marked the opening of the Sir Kesington Adebutu Geriatric Rehabilitation Centre.
The first Professor of Medicine in Nigeria, Prof. Theophilus Oladipo Ogunlesi, who delivered the anniversary lecture, lamented that President Muhammadu Buhari had to travel to London to cure his sickness.
He lamented how the UCH, which was among the four best teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth in the 1960s, had deteriorated to its present parlous state.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who chaired the occasion, described the state of health institutions in the country as “worrisome.”
He said: “The current state of our tertiary health care institutions, including the UCH is worrisome, because of poor funding, which had challenged the ageing infrastructure and recurrent strikes by health workers.
Obasanjo, who was represented by Dr. Demi Majekodunmi, said: “It is disheartening that Nigeria with an estimated population of over 180 million, does not have a dedicated one-stop-shop cancer centre when India could boast of over 120 such centres.