Kwara mulls overseas training for medical doctors

The Kwara State government is planning to send medical doctors in the state-owned hospitals overseas for training on specialised areas of medical fields as part of efforts to check the spread of various communicable and non-communicable diseases in the state.

The state governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed stated this in Ilorin during his monthly interactive personality programme on Radio tagged; “Governor Explains”. According to him, 'the scheme is a two-year bond between the medical practitioners and the state government so as to make them available for the development of health care delivery in the state”.

The governor, who said the scheme was aimed to retain medical doctors in the employment of the state government for the specified period of time for the health care needs of the people, particularly in the rural areas, added that it would also make them available to take care of growing population in the state.

Ahmed explained that, “We realise that if we train our medical doctors on a sort of scholarship programme on yearly basis, we will be able to retain them and make them available for a period of some time. They will be trained under a bond and there won’t be a lacuna because it will be a yearly programme. We have designed the scheme in such a way to outlive our administration, because we believe youths hold tomorrow of our state”.

The governor said that it was worrisome to see most of specialised medical practitioners in the state public health institutions not willing to stay in the service as they move to other places where they can get better conditions of service.

He said the government’s programme was also designed to refocus the health care delivery in the state, adding that, “Overseas medical study will go a long way to help retain these specialised medical personnel and make them available for our growing population”.

The governor, who said the project was in line with the immediate past administration’s health policy of building doctors’ quarters across the 16 local government councils of the state, added that it would create conducive working condition for them and thereby reduce mortality rate among the people.