For Nigeria's ailing healthcare sector, the prognosis remains very bleak, as emphasised by Prof. Akin Osibogun, President of the National Post-graduate
For Nigeria’s ailing healthcare sector, the prognosis remains very bleak, as emphasised by Prof. Akin Osibogun, President of theIn his stark warning, he shed light on the country’s rising scarcity of graduate doctors available for specialisation, a problem primarily attributed to persistent brain drain within the health sector.
“We need to ramp up our training processes, and we also need to put in place, largely on the side of the government, mechanisms to ensure that skilled manpower remains in the country,” he said while stressing that the continued emigration of medical professionals to foreign countries carries grave implications for Nigeria’s healthcare delivery system.
The recent surge in migration among young Nigerians is a cause for concern. This emerging trend has given rise to the use of the colloquial term Japa among the population to describe the widespread emigration from Nigeria, particularly to Europe and other parts of the world. While patients continue to crowd into Nigeria’s severely underfunded and under-staffed public hospitals in search of healthcare services, the most skilled medical professionals are departing in large numbers to seek better opportunities abroad, leaving the country with an insufficient workforce to care for its population.
To illustrate this point, the UK’s General Medical Council confirmed that as of August 30, 2022, a staggering 10,096 doctors trained in Nigeria and subsidised by Nigerian taxpayers had emigrated to Britain. Similarly, in 2020, over 3,894 doctors funded by Nigeria were granted authorisation to practise medicine in the United States, and no fewer than 632 were actively practising in Canada during the same period.
These factors, which include but are not limited to subpar working conditions, inadequate compensation and limited career advancement opportunities, serve as both push and pull factors that attract medical professionals to seek opportunities abroad. This absence of nationwide health insurance coverage not only imposes crippling financial burdens on patients and their families but also leads many individuals who cannot access care to resign themselves to their condition as a potential death sentence.
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