Nigeria’s Federal Government is moving to bring rehabilitation services directly into the country’s primary healthcare system, a potentially important shift for access to prosthetics, orthotics and assistive technology.
The initiative is designed to move services that have traditionally been concentrated in secondary and tertiary hospitals closer to communities, particularly people living with disabilities, older people, trauma survivors and those with long-term conditions affecting mobility and function.
The rollout follows the launch of an integrated rehabilitation model at Doya Primary Health Care Centre in Bauchi State, with the government now seeking additional funding to replicate the approach across the country. Nigeria has approximately 34,000 primary healthcare centres, making even partial implementation potentially significant for the rehabilitation sector.
For prosthetists and orthotists, the most notable aspect is that P&O has been explicitly included within the rehabilitation professions expected to participate in the programme.
Prosthetics and orthotics included at PHC level
The Doya model provides access to physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, audiology and prosthetics and orthotics services through the primary healthcare setting.
That does not necessarily mean every PHC will eventually contain a complete prosthetic workshop. A more realistic model is likely to involve screening, assessment, referral, follow-up and access to selected assistive products at community level, with more complex fabrication and specialist interventions provided through regional centres.
Even so, bringing P&O into primary healthcare could address one of the largest barriers facing patients: getting into the rehabilitation system in the first place.
A person with limb loss or a child who may require an orthosis is far more likely to have access to a local PHC than to a specialist rehabilitation hospital hundreds of kilometres away.
For CPOs, PHCs could therefore become an important part of the referral pathway, identifying patients earlier and linking them to specialist services before complications develop.
Nigeria faces a serious rehabilitation workforce shortage
Scaling the programme will require a substantial increase in rehabilitation capacity.
Health Minister Prof Muhammad Ali Pate said Nigeria currently has around 5,000 licensed physiotherapists to support a network of roughly 34,000 PHCs, alongside significant shortages in other rehabilitation professions.
The shortage is even more pronounced in some specialist disciplines.
In 2025, the Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Registration Board of Nigeria reported that there were fewer than 500 professionals in each of several key rehabilitation disciplines, including occupational therapy, speech therapy, audiology and prosthetics and orthotics.
That creates both a challenge and an opportunity for Nigeria’s P&O profession.
Expanding access cannot simply mean distributing more devices. It will require more trained clinicians, stronger education programmes, clinical placement opportunities, regional service networks and systems that allow existing CPOs to support a much wider population efficiently.
A potential new referral network for CPOs
For prosthetic and orthotic providers, the primary healthcare programme could create a far more structured route for finding patients who currently remain outside specialist rehabilitation.
PHC staff could potentially identify:
- people with new or established limb loss requiring prosthetic assessment;
- children with neuromuscular, neurological or musculoskeletal conditions who may benefit from orthoses;
- people with diabetic foot complications requiring protective footwear or orthotic intervention;
- stroke survivors and people with foot drop;
- patients whose existing prostheses or orthoses require repair, adjustment or replacement;
- people needing wheelchairs or other assistive products.
This could be particularly valuable in rural communities where awareness of P&O services may be low and transport to specialist centres remains difficult.
Rather than expecting every patient to locate a prosthetist independently, the PHC could become the entry point into a wider rehabilitation network.
Assistive products may also enter health insurance
Another potentially significant development is the government’s stated intention to integrate rehabilitation services and rehabilitation-related assistive products into the National Health Insurance Authority framework.
For P&O, financing is often as important as clinical availability.
A prosthetic or orthotic service may exist, but patients can still remain without treatment if socket fabrication, components, braces, footwear or assistive devices must be paid for entirely out of pocket.
If rehabilitation-related assistive products are eventually covered through national health insurance, it could help create a more sustainable funding mechanism for both patients and providers.
The details of what products will qualify, how reimbursement will work and how providers will be accredited will therefore be important for the Nigerian P&O industry to monitor.
National standards are being developed
Nigeria has also approved a National Minimum Benchmark Framework covering rehabilitation services and workforce requirements within primary healthcare.
Meanwhile, the National Rehabilitation Technical Working Group has been carrying out a rehabilitation situation assessment and developing a national policy, strategic plan and monitoring framework.
For CPOs, standardisation matters.
Expanding rehabilitation rapidly without clear professional boundaries, referral criteria and quality standards could risk poorly prescribed devices or unqualified provision.
The Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Registration Board has therefore emphasised the need to maintain safe and ethical rehabilitation services as the system expands.
A significant opportunity for Nigerian P&O
Nigeria’s move toward community-level rehabilitation could become one of the most important structural developments for the country’s prosthetics and orthotics profession.
The immediate opportunity is not necessarily the creation of thousands of new prosthetic workshops inside PHCs. It is the possibility of creating a national rehabilitation pathway that begins in the community and connects patients to qualified professionals, specialist centres and appropriate assistive technology.
For CPOs, that could mean larger referral networks, earlier intervention, stronger links with physiotherapists and doctors, and potentially more predictable funding through national health insurance.
But the scale of Nigeria’s population and PHC network also makes the workforce issue impossible to ignore.
If rehabilitation is genuinely to become available closer to where people live, Nigeria will need not only more equipment but significantly more trained prosthetists, orthotists and other rehabilitation professionals.
The policy direction is therefore important. The next test will be whether investment in workforce, financing, referral systems and assistive technology can keep pace with the ambition.
- Nigerian Tribune – FG moves to extend rehabilitation services to PHCs nationwide
- Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Registration Board of Nigeria
- Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare
- National Primary Health Care Development Agency
- World Health Organization – Rehabilitation 2030