Foreword

Dr. Inyang Ukot graduated from the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB, BS) in 1981. He completed a residency in Family Medicine and is a Fellow in Family Medicine of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (1991) and the West African College of Physicians (1995). He obtained the postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians of London in 2005. He was the coordinator of training in Family Medicine at the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria between 1995 and 1999.

Dr. Inyang Ukot has extensive experience as a family medicine specialist and first contact specialist in the health care system, a career spanning about 40 years in Nigeria. This extensive experience and exposure covered health care systems in the North, South, East and West of Nigeria, a highly populated developing nation in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the first year of his career, Inyang worked in Eku Baptist Hospital, located in a rural area in the South-South part of Nigeria; and during his year of compulsory service (NYSC) in Nigeria, he worked in a State government secondary care medical facility in Birnin-Gwari in the North-Central part of Nigeria. During his residency in Family Medicine, he had a stint in a Presbyterian Church hospital in the South-South part of Nigeria, NKST Church hospital and two Catholic Church hospitals in Benue State (North-Central part of Nigeria). Dr Inyang Ukot was the first family physician to head the General Outpatients’ Department of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital in the capital city of the oil-producing Rivers State in the early ‘90s. In the mid-nineties, he was one of the two specialists who led the medical services department of United Bank for Africa (UBA) in UBA House, Lagos Island, Lagos State. He worked in two busy, high-profile private hospitals in Ikeja, Lagos State, in the southwest of Nigeria between 1992 and 1996, and between 1998 and 2006, he was a staff physician for ExxonMobil in Nigeria.

Dr. Ukot’s vast work experience covers primary, secondary, and tertiary health care and hospitals. He has worked in hospitals in rural areas, semi-urban areas, and cities in Nigeria for over 40 years. He is well aware of the details of the structure and function/malfunction of the health care system and hospitals in Nigeria. The contents of this multi-author book, with chapters authored by well-chosen specialists are a valuable resource for current and prospective foreign and local investors in healthcare, proprietors, professionals, policymakers, regulators of medical training and practice, and patients in any setting in any developing country. He commenced the writing of his first book in medicine one year after completing his postgraduate training in Family Medicine, a writing career with publishing dates in 1996 and 2023. Many medical students have benefited from his MCQ book.

Inyang is, therefore, well experienced in writing Functionality and Efficient Services Delivery in Nigerian Hospitals, a book I recommend to all stakeholders in the Nigerian healthcare system and other sub-Saharan countries.