The Kaduna State chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has called for desperate measures to halt the brain drain of medical personnel as about 10,000 doctors have migrated out of the state to other nations in search of greener pastures.
The association observed that in the last seven years, no fewer than 10,000 doctors left Nigeria for the United Kingdom in search of better employment offers, a situation it said will not end well for the healthcare sector in Kaduna State.
The NMA observed that doctors in Kaduna State are the least remunerated, thereby worsening the situation of medical doctors.
Celebrating its ‘2022 Physicians’ Week’, the association lamented that the continued brain drain in the medical profession amidst deadly diseases in the country in the last seven years required more medical doctors.
Daily Post report that the Kaduna State Chairman of NMA, Dr Madaki Sheyin, observed that a Nigerian doctor is poorly paid, overworked, lacked necessary work tools to ensure better results and has become a target for kidnappers.
He also lamented that Nigerian doctors have been rendered unimportant by successive governments.
Dr Sheyin stated, “The issue of progressive depletion of human resources for health cannot be over emphasized. With the recent article from an Online Newspaper of 9th October 2022 titled “200 Nigerian Doctors Move to the UK in One Month’, the fact that checks on the website of the General Medical Council (GMC) the body which licenses and maintains the official register of medical practitioners in the UK, showed that the GMC licensed at least 200 Nigerian-trained doctors between August 31, 2022, and September 30, 2022”
He noted that the statistics also showed that between January 1, 2022, and September 30, 2022, about 1,307 doctors trained in Nigeria were licensed in the UK as Nigeria continues to battle one of the worst situations of brain drain in its history, adding that overall, 10,296 doctors who obtained their degrees in Nigeria currently practice in the UK.
He observed that the dispersion of the emigration data for Nigeria-trained doctors to the UK is 233 in 2015, 279 in 2016, 475 in 2017, 852 in 2018, 1,347 in 2019, and 833 in 2020 in spite of the COVID pandemic and 932 in 2021 during recovery from COVID.
In Kaduna State, he explained that the Kaduna doctor is even worse hit by these poor welfare conditions, stressing that doctors in the state’s employ receive only 60 percent of the CONMESS salary scale, a far cry from what those in the federal and other states are receiving.
He called on the government to quickly declare emergency action in Nigeria’s health sector for the sake of its citizens in order to arrest the deplorable situation.
The NMA appealed to the Kaduna State Government to immediately implement the report of the Committee on Review of Medical Doctors and other health workers’ salaries in Kaduna State and domesticate the newly approved hazard allowance for doctors as a way of arresting the situation.
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