About 40 percent of medical doctors in Nigeria are are unemployed, Chairman, Federal Capital Territory branch of the Nigeria Medical Association, Ekpe Phillips, has said. Ekpe, a gynaecologist at the Nyanyan General Hospital said this in Abuja yesterday at a roundtable discussion on accountability for maternal health in Nigeria organized by the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, in Partnership with the National Human Rights Commission.

He said: “Many of them are employed by private hospitals that are not even paying them enough because of the economy. We don’t have enough doctors and the ones we have are not being utilized.

“The manpower issue is that government is not engaging the needed health personnel. We need to make the place conducive. As you build the primary healthcare centres, make accommodation available, electricity and make life conducive for the workers.” Executive Director, WARDC, Abiola Afolabi, said, maternal mortality could be successfully reduced “if we put women’s rights at the centre of the equation.”