Medical practitioners need business skills to fix healthcare — Stakeholders - Punch Newspapers
Healthcare professionals and stakeholders have called for stronger leadership, entrepreneurship, and management training in Nigeria’s health sector.
They argued that clinical expertise alone cannot address the growing challenges of workforce shortages, inadequate funding, and limited access to quality care.
They made the call at the 2026 H-LEMP Africa Conference, themed “Transforming Africa’s Healthcare: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management Capacity Development for Sustainable Impact,” where stakeholders examined ways to strengthen healthcare delivery beyond traditional medical practice.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Iziaq Salako, said developing competent healthcare leaders was essential to managing available resources, attracting investment and strengthening local production of medical equipment and consumables.
Salako, who was represented at the event by the Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Prof. John Obafunwa, said Nigeria must tackle healthcare funding gaps, workforce shortages and poor access to quality services simultaneously.
He noted that the country’s commitment to allocating 15 per cent of its annual budget to health remained difficult amid competing demands for infrastructure, education and other public services.
The minister, however, stressed that funding constraints should not excuse inadequate investment in the sector, adding that the government was working to improve facilities in universities and increase the training of healthcare professionals to mitigate the effects of migration.
“One of the areas the Minister would be concentrating on that also needs a lot of commitments from all of us is on reducing maternal mortality,” Obafunwa said.
The conference convener, Dr. Ademolu Owoyele, popularly known as D’BusinessDoctor, said the healthcare system needed professionals who could translate medical knowledge into scalable solutions, rather than limiting their contributions to treating patients in consulting rooms.
According to him, opportunities in healthcare extend beyond establishing hospitals or becoming medical consultants to include health technology, medical education, healthcare management, and other entrepreneurial ventures capable of reaching larger populations.
Owoyele, who said the initiative had been developing healthcare professionals for about a decade, argued that poor working conditions and limited financial opportunities contributed to the migration of Nigerian medical professionals.
He maintained that equipping practitioners with entrepreneurial skills could improve their economic prospects, although better governance and a supportive healthcare environment remained necessary to retain them.
“The objective is to institutionalise the H-LEMP Initiative within the medical curriculum and that’s the reason we have brought in policymakers such as the Minister, Lagos State Commissioner for Health and other leaders,” Owoyele said.
As part of the conference, the D’BusinessDoctor Mentorship Academy graduated 55 scholars from its 12-week. The Business of Healthcare Programme, which trains healthcare students and professionals to develop business and entrepreneurial skills alongside their clinical expertise.
Each scholarship was valued at N500,000 and fully funded by ProvidusUnity Bank, making the programme free for the beneficiaries.
The initiative is expected to broaden participants’ understanding of career opportunities and business development within the healthcare industry.
The patron of H-LEMP Africa, Dr. Anthony Omolola, also called for greater investment in healthcare leadership, finance, entrepreneurship and innovation.
He said Nigeria’s large healthcare market presented opportunities for professionals willing to develop solutions to existing challenges.
He said although the search for better remuneration and working conditions continued to drive healthcare workers abroad, improving the domestic practice environment and equipping professionals with business knowledge could encourage more practitioners to build careers and enterprises in Nigeria.
The conference also featured the inaugural edition of D’BusinessDoctor Legacy and Hall of Fame Awards, which was won by Olo’rogun Dr. Sonny Kuku, while a pre-conference masterclass held a day earlier provided participants with training across the four pillars of H-LEMP: healthcare leadership, entrepreneurship, management, and innovation.
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