The Nigerian Medical Association has appealed to the Federal Government to ensure the health budget positively impacts the lives of doctors and health workers.

Its first Vice-President, Dr Benjamin Olowojebutu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday in Lagos.

Nigeria’s 2025 health budget is N2.48 trillion, which is 5.18 per cent of the total budget, a significant increase from the 2024 budget, which allocated N1.23 trillion to health.

Olowojebutu said there were issues around account – ability and budgeting for healthcare, stressing that the impact of healthcare funds was yet to be reflected in infrastructure, remuneration and training.

“You say you have a federal teaching hospital to train people, however, you now have departments in your hospital that don’t have doctors. So what are you training? “Why is it called a federal teaching hospital? So you create a budget for that training, but there are no doctors that are going to train.

“The effectiveness of our budgeting system must be looked into,” he said. The NMA leader noted that efforts should be made to ensure the country’s doctor-to-patient ratio aligned with the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard to improve patient safety.

Olowojebutu lamented that Chief Medical Directors of hospitals are oftentimes driven by profit or internally generated revenue without much thought to the workload impact on staff.”