Sanwo-Olu unveils new Lagos healthcare roadmap at 2nd Eko Health Convention

… Lagos needs 40,000 doctors, has 7,000

… Ilera Eko enrolment hits 1.5 million

By Chioma Obinna

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Thursday in Lagos unveiled a new roadmap for Lagos healthcare development, declaring that the next phase of the state’s health reform agenda will focus on building a system that combines wider access with higher standards of care.

Speaking while declaring open the 2nd Eko Health Convention, the governor said the administration was moving beyond the delivery of projects to creating institutions and systems capable of sustaining quality healthcare for residents.

He said the theme of the convention, “Building a Healthier Lagos: Connecting Access with Excellence”, captured the central challenge facing healthcare delivery, ensuring that quality services are not only available but also reachable. “Access without excellence is a queue. It is a clinic within walking distance where the drugs have run out. Excellence without access is a showpiece. It is a world-class hospital that a mother in Ajegunle will never enter. Lagos is not interested in either,” Sanwo-Olu said.

The governor said his administration’s focus was to create a healthcare system where good medical care is available to residents regardless of location or economic status.

“From promises kept to systems built. Because delivering a project is one thing. Building an institution that will still be delivering when all of us in this hall have moved on is another thing entirely,” he said.

A major component of the new roadmap is the expansion of digital healthcare through the Lagos Smart Health Information Platform (SHIP), the state’s health information exchange system.

Sanwo-Olu said SHIP has reached about 30 per cent implementation in its first phase, covering general hospitals, teaching hospitals and more than 300 primary healthcare facilities across the state.

He said the platform would allow medical records to move with patients across facilities, reduce repeated tests and improve decision-making through better use of data.

“When the record travels, the clinician sees the whole patient. When the data comes together, the policymaker sees the whole city. We move from reacting to anticipating,” he said.

The governor also highlighted the role of health insurance in expanding access, disclosing that 1,502,994 Lagos residents had enrolled under the Ilera Eko health insurance scheme as at the end of May 2026.

He said more than half of those enrolled are women, adding that rising utilisation of the scheme showed that coverage was translating into actual access to healthcare and not merely insurance cards.

Sanwo-Olu said the state’s healthcare financing reforms were designed to ensure residents are not forced to pay out-of-pocket at the point of illness.

According to him, the LASHMA Assistance in Distress programme, introduced to ensure emergency patients receive immediate care regardless of their ability to pay, has already saved 18 lives since it became operational in March.

The intervention has supported emergency cases including road traffic injuries, surgical emergencies, obstetric crises and strokes. “In an emergency, a Lagosian should be stabilised first and asked about payment afterwards,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu also said the government would continue to strengthen healthcare regulation, tackle quackery and ensure that facilities operating in the state meet required standards.

“A licence is a promise to a patient. We intend to keep it on their behalf,” he said.

The governor acknowledged the challenges confronting the health sector, including shortages of healthcare professionals and funding pressures.

He disclosed that Lagos requires about 40,000 doctors to adequately serve its population but currently has about 7,000, while also facing a shortage of about 40,000 nurses.

He said the government was responding through aggressive recruitment, improved working conditions, healthcare worker accommodation and increased investment in medical training.

Sanwo-Olu also disclosed that Lagos faces a healthcare funding gap of about N100 billion between current budgetary provision and what the system requires, noting that declining donor support had made sustainable financing reforms more urgent.

He said Lagos was developing a dedicated University of Medicine and Health Sciences to increase the production of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals required by the state.
Sanwo-Olu said the ultimate measure of success would not be the number of hospitals built but whether the systems created continue to serve residents in the future.

“A system is not the sum of its buildings. It is what continues to function when the person who commissioned the building has gone,” he said.

Speaking, the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said the Eko Health Convention was designed as a platform for all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem to work together.

He said the Ministry of Health was not limited to public facilities but was responsible for ensuring quality healthcare across the public, private and informal sectors.

“The Ministry of Health is not the Ministry of Health for public facilities. It’s the Ministry of Health for all Lagosians,” Abayomi said.

He said the informal health sector, which includes traditional medicine practitioners, alternative medicine providers and patent medicine vendors, must also be regulated to ensure Lagos residents receive care that meets acceptable standards.

Abayomi said Lagos was positioning itself as a medical tourism destination by expanding specialist healthcare facilities and creating opportunities for highly skilled professionals who have left the country to return.

“If you’re a brain surgeon, you should be able to come back to Lagos and do brain surgery. You can’t do brain surgery in an ordinary hospital. It needs to be a hospital that is specially set up,” he said.

He disclosed that the Lagos State College of Medicine would transition into a broader University of Medicine and Health Sciences, allowing the state to expand its capacity to train healthcare professionals.

Abayomi said the state was pursuing a brain gain strategy rather than opposing migration of professionals.

“We are not against Japa. You want to go somewhere to explore and see how things are done differently. But what we need is a circular movement, go out, gain experience and come back to implement what you have learnt,” he said.

He added that technology would also help close healthcare gaps by enabling telemedicine, virtual learning and access to expertise from anywhere in the world.

The commissioner urged Lagos residents to embrace health insurance and encouraged people to seek proper diagnosis before taking medication.

He said malaria self-diagnosis remained a challenge, noting that many fevers were wrongly treated as malaria.

According to him, rapid diagnostic testing has reduced malaria test positivity in public facilities from about 60 per cent to around 5 per cent, showing that many illnesses previously treated as malaria were caused by other conditions.

He added that malaria prevalence in Lagos had reduced from about 15 per cent fifteen years ago to about 2 per cent, bringing the state closer to pre-elimination levels.

“Let’s do the test, make sure it’s not malaria. If it’s not malaria, then we investigate to find out what it really is,” he said.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Health, Dr. Kemi Ogunyemi, urged healthcare workers to remain committed to building the state’s health system, saying the government was investing in skills development, innovation and professional growth.

She said the convention was an opportunity to show healthcare workers the progress being made and encourage them to be part of the transformation.

“We want them to stay. We are increasing capacity and skilling our healthcare workers,” Ogunyemi said.

She said the government was open to ideas from healthcare professionals and believed collaboration was essential to strengthening the system. “Government cannot do it all. We need everybody,” she said.

Ogunyemi added that healthcare professionals who had relocated abroad could contribute to Lagos’ development by returning with new knowledge and experience