BENJAMIN OMOIKE
The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), has decried how brain drain is killing the health sector in the country, revealing that about 10,296 doctors now practice in the United Kingdom (UK), making Nigeria to have the third highest foreign doctors in that country.
The body raised the alarm over increasing maternal and infant mortality in Ekiti State, hinging the incidence on the geometric loss of doctors to other facilities and movements to foreign countries.
The state NMA chairman, Dr. Babatunde Rosiji, said this at a press conference heralding the 2022 Physicians’ Week in Ado-Ekiti.
“Statistics by General Medical Council, which licences and maintains official register of medical practitioners in the UK, showed that 200 Nigerian-trained doctors were licenced between August 31, 2022, and September 30, 2022.
“The statistics also showed that about 1,307 doctors trained in Nigeria were licenced in the UK, as Nigeria continues to battle one of the worst situations of brain drain in history. In overall, 10,296 doctors who obtained their degrees in Nigeria currently practice in the UK,” he said.
On the crisis in Ekiti State health sector, he said “every secondary health centre and specialist hospital in Ekiti ought to have, at least, nine doctors, “but the highest we have is two per hospital. We are supposed to have 276 doctors, but we have just 85. How do you expect us not to have high mortality?”
“We need about 195 doctors to run the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, but we only have 95. Why should people blame doctors for the monster the government has created? For the primary, we need 32, but only have 12 and four of them will be retiring soon,” he said.
He expressed regret that four Local Government Areas in Ekiti have no doctors to oversee their primary healthcare centres, a development he said also contributed to high disease index in the state.
Rosiji appealed to Nigerians to be patriotic in 2023 by voting for a candidate that could rescue the country from the current difficulties, rather than placing high premium on vote buying and other pecuniary gains which could sway their positions wrongly.
“The era of blind loyalty is over. Let us all patiently wait to hear the plans of the presidential candidates for the health sector before pitching our political support for the one with the best health policy,” he said.
In a related development, the NMA says the country’s brain drain has left Nigeria with only 24, 000 actively licenced doctors caring for its population of over 200 million.
NMA President, Ojinmah Uche, giving credence to Rosiji’s assessment, stated this in Abuja during a policy dialogue on ‘Nigeria’s Health Sector Brain Drain And Its Implications For Sustainable Child And Family Health Service Delivery’, organised by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, in collaboration with the Partnership for Advancing Child and Family Health at Scale project of the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC).
He said this gives a horrible true ratio of approximately one doctor to 10,000 patients ratio.
He said, “Only one doctor is incredibly available to treat 30,000 patients in some states in the South; while states in the North are as worse as one doctor to 45,000 patients. In some rural areas, patients have to travel more than 30 kilometres from their abodes to get medical attention where available, thus Nigeria making access to healthcare a rarity.”
Ojinmah said that based on the World Health Organisation’s established minimum threshold, a country needs a mix of 23 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 population to deliver essential maternal and child health services.
He blamed brain drain on poor funding of the health sector, stressful medical education, non-existent house job slots, difficulty in gaining employment, poor remuneration, unnecessary and unhealthy inter-professional rivalry, and insecurity, among others.
The Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, Ayo Omotayo, said Nigeria currently has the third highest number of foreign medical doctors working in the United Kingdom after India and Pakistan.
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, represented by Sydney Ibeanusi, Director of Trauma, Emergency and Disaster Response, said the emigration of trained and highly skilled health workforce was of great concern as it put further strain on the already challenged health system.
He said some other things to consider to repatriate the acquired knowledge and skill by the migrating workforce are bonding of healthcare persons trained in the public health institutions, increasing the tuition fee in public health institutions relative to those in the private institution, and provision of grants for trainee, which must be paid back after graduation, before they will be allowed to emigrate.
