A neurologist and health technology expert, Dr. Temitope Farombi, has warned that Nigeria’s healthcare system is facing a deepening crisis driven by the mass migration of medical professionals, recurring industrial strikes and widespread drug abuse, urging urgent reforms and the adoption of telemedicine to avert systemic collapse.
Farombi, Managing Director of the Brain Centre for Neuro-Critical and Rehabilitation Centre and founder of a telemedicine and health-tech platform, said the country’s health challenges have become more complex and severe, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic exposed long-standing structural weaknesses in service delivery.
She recalled that Nigeria attempted to introduce telemedicine over two decades ago without success, but said private initiatives have now demonstrated its viability. According to her, the pandemic period revealed how delayed access to proper medical care continues to claim lives, as many patients exhaust their savings at religious centres, traditional healers or poorly equipped facilities before eventually reaching specialists, often when intervention is no longer effective.
“Access is the biggest problem in our healthcare system,” she said. “We discovered that with just a mobile phone, email or telephone, we could connect patients to doctors willing to help, regardless of location.”
Farombi explained that during the pandemic, she established the Brain Health Initiative, an NGO that provided consultations through basic GSM phone lines. Within six months, the initiative had reached over 7,000 people nationwide, including cancer patients who needed prescriptions but could not physically access hospitals.
Building on that experience, she said her team launched a digital health ecosystem in January 2024, including electronic health records that allow hospitals to manage patient data and enable cross-location consultations. She disclosed that more than 35,000 consultations have been conducted so far, with doctors attending to patients across states and even internationally.
“With over 180 million Nigerians having access to mobile phones and more than 50 per cent internet penetration, the tools are already in our hands. What is missing is deliberate policy support and investment,” she said.
Farombi also raised concern over Nigeria’s severe shortage of specialists, noting that the country has fewer than 100 neurologists serving a population of over 200 million people. This, she said, has created long waiting times and forced many patients to rely on unqualified practitioners.
To mitigate this, she said her organisation is training family caregivers, community health workers and nurses to manage conditions such as dementia and epilepsy under specialist supervision. She added that public education is also being intensified to address misconceptions around neurological conditions, which are often linked to witchcraft or spiritual causes.
She expressed deep worry over rising drug abuse, particularly among young people, describing it as a major contributor to mental health problems and neurological damage. While noting that drugs such as codeine are not inherently harmful when properly prescribed, she said their misuse has become rampant due to poor regulation.
“Nobody should be allowed to hawk medicine,” she said, warning that even common drugs like paracetamol can cause severe organ damage when abused. She called for the scrapping or strict regulation of patent medicine vendors, stressing that the indiscriminate sale and poor storage of drugs in harsh conditions compromise their safety and effectiveness.
Farombi described the problem as systemic, noting that public outrage often only arises when tragedies affect prominent individuals, while countless ordinary Nigerians suffer in silence. Speaking emotionally, she recounted losing a close family member to medical quackery, describing it as a personal reminder of the cost of regulatory failure.
On the broader health system, she warned that repeated strikes in the public health sector and the continuous emigration of doctors, nurses and pharmacists have weakened primary healthcare delivery. She said that by 2030, the burden on the system would be even more severe if urgent action is not taken.
According to her, telemedicine offers the most realistic solution to reaching rural populations, where doctors are scarce and often overstretched. She explained that while most doctors are based in urban centres, telemedicine allows specialists to supervise and support healthcare delivery in rural clinics remotely.
To scale these efforts nationally, Farombi called for a formal national telemedicine policy, strong health data protection laws and sustained government investment in digital infrastructure at the primary healthcare level. She also advocated inter-ministerial collaboration involving health, information and education authorities to address drug abuse, misinformation and poor health-seeking behaviour.
“Nigeria must stop waiting for external donors to fix its health system,” she said. “We need to take responsibility, use technology wisely and build a system that works for everyone, especially the most vulnerable.”
She urged policymakers, health professionals and the private sector to act collectively, warning that failure to do so would leave millions without access to quality healthcare in the years ahead.
