500 specialised nurses handle millions of kidney patients in Nigeria – Coordinator
The Programme Coordinator of School of Post Basic Nephrology Nursing, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Mrs Segun-Agboola Beatrice Titilola has disclosed that there are only 500 Nephrology nurses in the entire country.
The Coordinator made the disclosure during the first refresher course for Nephrology nursing programme held at Ilorin on Tuesday.
She said “our major challenge in Nigeria is inadequacy in manpower and infrastructures for treating patients with kidney infections as it is on the increase daily.
“In fact we actually don’t have schools of post basic Nephrology in Nigeria like UITH is the first in the country and we have one in Abuja as the only two centres in Nigeria resulting to inadequacy to meet the teeming patients with kidney problems.
“One of the problems causing people to suffer kidney infection is hypertension and diabetes and these are increasing on daily basis in the country. Because of this we need manpower to take care of the patients with these diseases.
According to her there are just about 500 Nephrology nurses to cover millions of kidney patients with the country having about 200million population which is grossly inadequate.
She said “We are appealing to the federal government to increase the quota of training for instance we only have 30 slots allotted to UITH here to train. If the infrastructure is increased we can take more nurses that want to specialize in nephrology.
“The government needs to intervene to ensure that the infrastructures are there as the machines that we use for training are very expensive and most of these hospitals cannot afford to buy more than two.
Mrs Segun-Agboola revealed that the pioneer refresher course was organized to capture graduands in the field trained before the accreditation of the programme so that they can be duly registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria.
According to her the training will last for four weeks loaded with didactic lectures from seasoned lecturers with two weeks exposure to practical sessions.
The Chief Medical Director of UITH, Prof. DaSilva Yusuf who was represented by Dr. Louis Odega stressed that refresher course is becoming a mandatory programme in very professional carrier therefore tasked on the participants to be attentive to comply with the rules of the session.
He said “You are now confronted with different challenges in your experiences as nephrologists in your workplaces and this programme is targeted at addressing and exposing you to lot of activities.
The highlights of the opening session recorded about 60 nephrologists with experts in the medical sector in attendance.
