Keypoints:
- Only about 100 ambulances serve 20m people
- Gridlock and mistrust slow emergency responses
- Private firms aim for eight-minute response
STANDING outside a crowded public hospital in Lagos, 25-year-old Michelin Hunsa still recalls the terror of waiting two hours for an ambulance to collect her mother, who had collapsed at home. ‘It was a serious problem, we waited far too long,’ she told AFP. Her mother survived a cerebral haemorrhage, but Hunsa remains ‘traumatised’ by the ordeal.
Such stories are common in Nigeria’s largest city, where more than 20 million people rely on barely 100 ambulances and spend hours trapped in notorious traffic jams.
Traffic gridlock and mistrust
Ambulance drivers weave through Lagos’s endless queues of cars with sirens blaring, but success is far from guaranteed. Drivers often refuse to yield, assuming emergency vehicles are ferrying VIPs rather than patients.
‘I’m sure most of the time they don’t transport real emergency cases, that’s why I don’t move,’ said Anthony Folayinka, a 38-year-old ride-share driver.
Queen Soetan, a 33-year-old ambulance driver, admitted this scepticism is widespread. ‘Most people will not just want to leave the road, so it does affect our intervention time,’ she said.
Critical shortage of ambulances
According to Olusegun Ogboye, permanent secretary at the Lagos state ministry of health, the government operates just 35 ambulances. Another 80 to 90 belong to private companies, leaving roughly one ambulance per 200,000 residents—far below international medical guidelines.
Private operator Eight Medical, founded in 2021 by Dr Ibukun Tunde-Oni, runs 34 ambulances with a goal of eight-minute responses. The name reflects the global benchmark, but Lagos remains far from achieving it.
Tunde-Oni was inspired to act after losing two uncles to medical emergencies and once waiting three hours for help after a road accident. ‘One hundred ambulances for Lagos is not enough,’ he told AFP.
Growing population, strained services
Lagos is expected to become the world’s most populous city by 2100, reaching an estimated 88 million residents, according to the University of Toronto’s Global Cities Institute. Yet public services have lagged behind the city’s rapid growth, and Nigeria’s vast oil wealth has done little to change that. Even with more ambulances, poor road conditions and lack of hospital coordination remain barriers.
Some innovations offer hope. In 2022, officials launched a floating clinic and boat ambulance to reach the lagoon’s waterfront communities, said waterways official Ibrahim Famuyiwa. But limited funding has slowed expansion, leaving authorities to focus on boosting land-based services through public-private partnerships.
For residents like Hunsa, meaningful change cannot come soon enough. Without it, the race against Lagos traffic will keep putting lives at risk.
