‘Lack of human capital development bane of Nigeria’s health care’

A medical expert, Professor Mayowa Owolabi has said that Nigeria’s health care is backward because it lacks human capital development.

Owolabi, the Dean, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, University of Ibadan, spoke at the Alexander Brown Hall during the Emeritus Professor Oladipo Akinkugbe Memorial Symposium with the theme “Challenges: The Paraphernalia for Opportunities”.

Professor Owolabi stated that the lack of human capital development has prevented Nigerian doctors and other scientists from competing with the best countries in the world despite its teeming young population.

According to him, unlike other industrial and agricultural revolutions experienced in the past, brain capital is the most important aspect of the human capital development for Nigeria to participate fully in the ongoing digital era.

Owolabi, the pioneer director, Centre for Genomic and Precision Medicine, stated that “available data is big, that is why it is called big data. This has made things that were unthinkable achievable, and we need to tap into this for the African continent to rise.”

Professor Owolabi, however, declared that doctors in Nigeria can make a global impact if they were able to generate novel ideas that become acceptable sources to global problems or challenges and not necessarily because of access to sophisticated technology.

He added, “it is not just diagnostic skills that are required to be successful physicians or clinicians. You need a lot of other tools, including digital, social, communication, economics, and leadership skills and most importantly self-directed lifelong learning skills.”

Mr Ibrahim Hammed, a physiologist and IT expert, who spoke on the future of technology in medicine, said Nigeria’s adoption of technology for health care delivery is low although it could ensure its health care delivery reaches a better height.

According to him, “medical records, automation of hospitals, dispensing of medical products in the hospital, support for surgery and even dispensing of medical products in the hospital can be influenced easily through technology.

“Training of medical students doesn’t have to be necessarily in the classroom. There are virtual classrooms or hybrid classrooms that can aid this and their practical classes could also be held through simulations. There are many wearable devices that patients can use outside, the data can be sent into the cloud where their doctors can access such data and be able to provide remote advice to the patients on their health.”

Mr Hammed added, “when all those stakeholders in the health sector stop trading blame, come together and see themselves as partners in progress, it will be easier for centres of excellence like UCH to have most of the technologies they need to make health care services much better than it is.”