The Urgent Need for Postgraduate Medical Training in Emergency Medicine in Nigeria

Emergency medicine is a standalone field of medicine which has developed over decades to become the bedrock of emergency care in developed countries. It is a fairly new specialty, which started to receive recognition in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s as a distinct specialty, out of the need to care for a growing population of unscheduled and undifferentiated patients who needed immediate medical care . The emergency medicine training framework is in different stages of development in Africa. It is highly developed in some parts of the continent, yet remains rudimentary and virtually non-existent in other parts. The flagship emergency medicine residency training program in Africa began in the University of Cape Town in 2004 , after which several programs in other African countries such as Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan and Tanzania sprang up. As of 2017, there were 15 emergency medicine residency training programs across 12 countries in Africa....