Nigeria reaps fruit of neglect as medical professionals leave for UK, US, Canada
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Stakeholders have again expressed concern at the rate at which healthcare professionals are leaving Nigeria with report that 9,000 doctors emigrated to the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada between 2016 and 2018.
An additional 727 doctors left for the UK between December 2021 and May this year alone.
The figures were disclosed in Abuja at a symposium anchored by the Partnership for Advancing Child and Family Health at Scale (PAS).
The policy advocacy project is implemented through partnerships by the development Research and Projects (dRPC) and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stem Nigeria’s brain drain.
Participants at the symposium included officials of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS).
Data from the UK Register of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) shows the number of Nigeria-trained nurses working in the country rose 68.4 per cent from 2,790 in March 2017 to 7,256 in March 2022.
The symposium advocated a conducive environment for healthcare professionals to thrive and tackling other socio-economic aspects such insecurity, poor remuneration and welfare, among others.
“As of today, Nigeria-trained doctors are leaving in droves for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. No official figures yet, but it can’t be less than 2,000 as of today,” NMA President Uche Ojinmah said, per The PUNCH.
“Brain drain is real. But it is worse as it pertains to medical residency (medical postgraduate clinical training) programmes in Nigeria because the trainers (specialists) and trainees/possible trainees (raw material) are being ‘drained’ down to dregs.”
NIPSS Director General Ayo Omotayo, a Professor, added: “There is a need for an improved health workers’ supply to tackle the supply deficit in order to solve the disease burden and positively turn the tide of health indicators.
“In addition, there is the urgent need for our country to meet the 15 per cent allocation of the total domestic budget to the health sector as pledged by Nigeria and African countries in 2001.”
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Related articles:
NMA repeats health sector collapse warning as Nigerian doctors in UK increase to 10,296
Nurses canvass for creation of Bank of Health to facilitate healthcare delivery
Brain drain leaves Nigeria with a doctor-patient ratio of 1:45,000
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Nigeria loses $1.1b yearly to medical tourism
Budglt, a Civil Society Organisation (CSO), has disclosed Nigeria loses about $1.1 billion yearly to medical tourism, money that could be saved if Abuja pays attention to the healthcare system, per The Nation.
Budglt’s Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa sought laws to bar public officials from foreign medical treatment at the launch of the Nigerian health sector accountability report by Budglt, Connected Development (CODE) in collaboration with Skoll and Conrad Hilton Foundation.
Said he: “I talked about how $1.1 billion is being spent out of this country yearly for medical tourism; we can keep the money in our country if we improve our healthcare systems.
“The healthcare systems that we don’t use, we don’t have the incentive to make better.
“We need to make laws that bar our public officials from going out there to seek medical attention. If everyone stays back to use the medical systems in Nigeria, it would be improved.
“We have still not seen the audited statement of the COVID-19 funds spent in Nigeria; we have asked and tried to get it. I won’t categorically say that all the funds were mismanaged but did they judiciously use these funds?
“These are questions that would be answered when we get the audited statements but on the Nocopo platform, we saw that some things were purchased that didn’t meet the value in the market; it looked outrageous, talking about the nose masks, PPEs. We called all the MDAs responsible for making expenditures.”
Budglt Global Director Olusegun Onigbinde said political campaigns should be centred around healthcare systems.
CODE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) CODE and Follow the Money founder Hamzat Lawal explained the meeting was to prepare Nigeria for the next pandemic after Covid.
