The unbridled migration of Nigerian doctors to foreign countries in search of greener pastures has worsened the nation’s doctor/patient ratio currently put at about one doctor for 10,000 people. This estimate may be conservative considering our poor statistical culture. The problem is likely to be more acute in rural areas than big urban cities like Lagos and Abuja. It is also bound to vary from state to state and from region to region.
Regardless of this disparity, the brain drain in the health sector can no longer be waved aside. It is a problem the federal government must tackle with great urgency. According to the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, only 55,000 licensed doctors now serve Nigeria’s growing population of over 200 million. The minister stated that about 16,000 doctors left the country in the last five years. Pate also disclosed that Nigeria has about 300,000 health professionals.
These include doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and others. Out of this number, about 85,000 to 90,000 are registered Nigerian doctors. As the minister revealed, not all of them are practising in the country. Some of these doctors, Pate says, are working in the diaspora, especially in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK). The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that about 2,000 Nigerian doctors emigrate yearly to the US, UK and Canada. Nigeria’s doctor/patient ratio of one doctor to 10,000 people is far below the recommendation of the WHO of one doctor to 500 people.
Not less than 18,224 Nigerian health workers were granted visas by the UK in one year, according to available records from the British government. According to the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), Nigeria currently topped the list of emigrant health workers in Africa as the number of Nigerians under the health and care skilled work visa had risen by 215 per cent or 18,224, from 8,491 in 2022 to 26,715 in 2023.
Available figures from the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) revealed that 75,000 Nigerian nurses left the country to work in the UK, US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Australia and others between 2017 and 2023. While one nurse is supposed to cater for 144 patients, in Nigeria the ratio now is one nurse to 1,660 patients. This is abysmally poor and unacceptable.
We deplore the deteriorating state of the nation’s health sector occasioned by recurring poor funding and brain drain. The utter neglect of the sector by successive administrations has invariably led to medical tourism embarked by our politicians and other affluent Nigerians. It is fast becoming a status symbol for the political elite to travel abroad for medical attention.
The federal government should increase budgetary allocation to health from its present four to five per cent to 15 per cent agreed by African heads of state some years ago in Abuja. The five per cent budgetary allocation to health is dismal and grossly inadequate. The present poor funding of the critical health sector is undermining our socio-economic development. All tiers of government must prioritise adequate funding of the health sector beginning with primary health care, which caters for about 70 per cent of the nation’s disease burden.
Apart from Lagos State and perhaps a few others, many of the states are yet to give the health sector the much-needed attention. The best way to stem the mass exodus of doctors and other medical professionals is for the government to invest massively in the health sector. With poor funding, the future of the nation’s health care delivery system appears very gloomy. It is sad that out of the thousands of medical doctors trained in Nigeria, most of them are working in foreign countries because of enhanced remuneration and other incentives. The dilemma is that even those in medical schools are already dreaming of moving abroad to work. We must strive to bring back some of these doctors and other health workers through offering them improved working conditions.
If the government fails to act urgently in the area of enhancing the welfare of our doctors and other health professionals, the health sector is bound to collapse soon with dire consequences. It is good that the minister of health is aware of the challenges of the sector. He should go ahead and do something quickly to change the ugly narrative. The comatose sector needs urgent revamping.