Doctors’ Exodus: Improve medical doctors welfare – NMA urges FG
Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) has advised Nigerian government to improve welfare of medical doctors to check the mass exodus of doctors to developed countries.
SOLACEBASE reports that data available has indicated that about 10,296 doctors that are trained in Nigeria are currently working on United Kingdom.
This experts say is increasing the brain drain in the medical profession and inimical to the growth of the health sector and health care delivery.
Addressing journalists to mark the 2022 Physicians’ Week, on Monday, Kano NMA branch Chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Sulaiman said if the government would address that pay disparity between state and federal, it would mitigate the problem of internal and external brain drain.
“If government would address pay disparity between state and federal government, that would stop doctors from going to Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, among others.”
“You know, Nigerian doctors go to even African countries, not only UK or Europe. This is to show you how bad the situation is.”
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“People would want to work with state government than federal if the salary doesn’t have disparity,” he said.
The NMA Chairman also advised the government to improve working condition of doctors at medical institutions.
He noted that poor working condition, not only good salary, but poor equipment and other logistics would make doctors leave the country..
Sulaiman noted that people are accusing doctors of being unpatriotic by leaving for foreign countries, saying” doctors are one of the most patriotic in Nigeria in view of the salary they are earning, compared to other countries.
According to him, “In some countries, the pay of one doctor, can pay the salaries of all of us sitting on this table monthly and still have change, you can imagine the disparity.”
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