The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has revealed that more than 9,000 medical doctors of Nigerian descent left the country to search for better life in Canada, United Kingdom, and United States of America in two years.
The relocation of the medical experts which according to the NMA took place between 2016 and 2018, negatively affected Nigeria’s health care system to the extent that only 4.7% of specialists remained to take care of Nigerians’ health issues.
While speaking in Abuja, the NMA President, Professor Innocent Ujah, lamented the high relocation rate of doctors of Nigerian origin to foreign nations.
Ujah who was a speaker at the NMA’s maiden annual lecture with a theme: “Brain Drain and Medical Tourism: The Twin Evil in Nigeria’s Health System”, also said more than $1 billion was being spent annually by Nigerians on medical tourism.
While talking further, Professor Ujah said Africa, including Nigeria, was encountering a heavy health workforce crisis.
He noted that human resources for health which represented “one of the six pillars of a strong and efficient health system”, was significant to the improvement the health system. He said a great amount Nigerians were injecting into medical tourism that was crippling Nigeria’s economy.
He said the impact of the development on the economy was a decline of funding and investment in the health sector, growing infrastructural deficits and the increasing distrust in the Nigerian health system by the Nigerian public.
He said: “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), sub-Saharan Africa has about 3 per cent of the world’s health workers while it accounts for 24 per cent of the global burden of disease. Nigeria has a doctor-to-population ratio of about 1: 4000-5000 which falls far short of the WHO recommended doctor-to-population ratio of 1:600. Nigeria is still grappling with disturbingly poor health indices.
“The Nigerian health sector today groans under the devastating impact of huge human capital flight which now manifests as brain drain.
“The twin monster of brain drain and medical tourism seems to have a bi-directional relationship, which implies that one will lead to the other and vice-versa.
“It is because of the devastating consequences of this twin evil on the health system efficiency and effectiveness and the urgent need for solutions and action that inspired the theme for this maiden NMA Annual Lecture tagged, Brain Drain and Medical Tourism: The Twin evil in Nigeria’s Health System.
“The burning desire of NMA to proactively confront the many challenges of healthcare delivery in Nigeria must be sustained using evidence-based constructive engagement, high-level advocacy and understanding to achieve quality healthcare for our people so as to reduce the unacceptably high morbidity and mortality.
“This national discourse on brain drain and medical tourism is, therefore, inevitable at this time and it is only right, just and appropriate for Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) to take the lead, being the leader of the health team.”
