By: Blessing Opeyemi
According to the World Health Organisation data, there are 4,000 to 5000 patients to one medical doctor in Nigeria. A country of over 200 million citizens has less than 170,000 registered medical doctors which is just a half of the estimated 340,000 medical doctors that are meant to be in the country based on the recommendation of the World Health Organisation of 600 : 1 doctor ratio. Over the years, Nigeria has trained medical doctors who after getting educated and ripe enough for practice, leave the country for greener pastures like the UK , US, Germany, and Canada where they are well paid, secured and they’re not “choked” with the hospital workload.
During the Maiden Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) Annual Lecture Series held earlier in the year on Monday, 4th of April, in Abuja themed “Brain Drain and Medical Tourism: The Twin evil in Nigeria’s Health System”, Professor Innocent Ujah, the President of Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) said Nigeria has lost over 9,000 medical doctors to the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America between 2016 and 2018. In fact, no fewer than 727 medical doctors trained in Nigeria relocated to the United Kingdom alone between December 2021 and May 2022 according to him. This leaves the country with only 4.7% of medical practitioners to cater for the health needs of Nigerians
Brain drain in the Nigerian health sector is a problem which calls for an urgent solution. Amidst the high living cost, insecurity and low remuneration in the country, medical doctors and nurses are taking advantage of every opportunity to leave the country for more developed countries where conditions are not miserable or intolerable.
Looking into the situation, we would ask ourselves the “why” and root causes of brain drain in the health sector. This is not far fetched because persisting poor leadership has been pointed out by some researchers as a critical factor leading to mass brain drain. In 2021, the Nigerian doctors embarked on a labour strike organised under the Association of Resident Doctors (NARD)which began on 2nd of August and was suspended by court order on the 23rd of August. The strike action was to over the unavailability of medical equipment in public tertiary hospitals and staff welfare. Also, in 2022, the NARD had given the Federal Government a two-week ultimatum to commence payment of the newly-reviewed Medical Residency Training Fund and hazard allowance, the payment of the skipping arrears for 2014, 2015 and 2016 to deserving members and consequential adjustment of the minimum wage to members who were deprived since it was implemented amidst other issues.
Also, other factors such as mass unemployment, poor working conditions, poor salary structure, political and religious crises, lack of quality education delivery and mass poverty and high living cost has led to more brain drain( according to yhe Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that inflation rose by 20.8% in September, the highest rate since 2005, up from 20.52% recorded in August,2022)
The realities before the country is one that demands a responsive health system. The growing population, reflecting an explosive dimension, would only require that there should be a conscious investment in the health sector for a healthy structure to cater for the needs of a population growing in such dimension. The poor commitment of the government to the challenges of the health sector has been unimpressive, apparently reflecting insensitivity to the demands from the sector in view of the realities of a growing population.
