Reps committee urges Federal Teaching Hospitals to prioritise medical research

Addressing claims by Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) that less than one percent of their budgets is allocated to research, Umoh stated that hospital leaders have contributed to the problem by failing to highlight underfunding in their budget proposals.

“Teaching hospitals are meant to be centres of research. Yet, you focus on infrastructure and neglect research funding, making you part of the problem,” Umoh said. “The COVID-19 pandemic caught us all unprepared. To be frank, traditional practitioners appear to be doing better than our teaching hospitals in this regard. I have conducted numerous oversight visits, yet no hospital has shown me a dedicated research facility.”

Responding on behalf of the CMDs, Secretary of the Committee and Chief Medical Director of Jos University Teaching Hospital, Prof. Pokop Wushipba Bupwatda, confirmed that only one percent of teaching hospital budgets are allocated to research. He added that in many instances, the research budget line is removed entirely.

Prof. Bupwatda called for increased funding to enable hospitals to employ qualified personnel and improve staff welfare, addressing the persistent “japa syndrome” in the sector.

He said the hospitals are short of medical doctors and when they are given the opportunity to employ, Doctors hardly come forward to apply, adding that inspite of that, the available personnel have often done their best to deliver quality health care and deserve commendation from Nigerians.

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He said it was unfortunate that Nigerians often pay more attention to the few mistakes in the sector, rather than the gains being made which he said has attracted foreigners into the health sector.

He said the sector was going through series of challenges that has impacted their operation, adding that only 30 percent of the 2025 budget was released to the federal tertiary in their 2025 budget, despite efforts by the House to improve on their budget.

Prof. Bupwatda said one of the major challenges in the sector is the issue of power supply, adding that the hospitals were spending so much money in the payment of electricity bills, since they require constant power to maintain some of their equipment and even to treat some patients.

He said the Federal hospitals were operating under band A, which takes so much resources from them, in addition to funds spent in running their generating plants, adding that the proposal to provide solar mini grid for the teaching hospitals and Federal Medical centres was a welcome development.

He told the members to provide take off grant to about seven new federal health centres recently created to enable them carry out their assignments.