Health minister dismisses worries over doctors exodus saying they can easily be replaced

HEALTH minister Dr Osagie Ehanire has played down the ongoing exodus of medical doctors Nigeria is currently witnessing saying that the country produces enough practitioners to replace all those who leave.

Amid a severe crisis in the Nigerian health sector, more and more doctors are leaving for abroad, with the UK among their top destinations. For instance, Britain's General Medical Council (GMC) which licenses and maintains the official register of medical practitioners in the UK, licensed at least 266 Nigerian doctors during the course of June and July this year alone.

At the moment, the GMC register shows that the number of Nigeria-trained doctors in the UK currently stands at 9,976. This figure does not include other doctors of Nigerian origin who did not undergo medical training in Nigeria but presently, Nigeria has the third highest number of foreign doctors working in the UK after India and Pakistan.

Unperturbed about the crisis, however, Dr Ehanire, said there are actually enough medical doctors in Nigeria and the federal government is working towards replacing anyone who resigns and leaves the country. Speaking in Abuja during a media conference, Dr Ehanire also said there was no embargo on the employment of doctors and other health personnel in the country.

He added: “There is no embargo on employing doctors and where there is a need, we do but because there are civil service regulations, there are processes before doctors are employed. We have heard complaints of doctors who are now leaving the system but there are actually enough doctors in the system because we are producing up to 2,000 or 3,000 doctors every year in the country and the number leaving is less than 1,000.

“It is just that the employment process needs to be smoothened, so if we have one replacement then you are not likely to have shortages. But that has been worked out because the Head of Service had the experience that in the past when one person goes, they use the opportunity to take three and those others may not even be people who are required."

meanwhile, Dr Deborah Bitrus-Oghoghorie of the Department of Hospital services, said that the issue of the two weeks ultimatum given by the National Association of Resident Doctors for the federal government to meet the demands of the association or risk an industrial action was being looked into. She added that they are mainly financial issues which the ministry could not solve on its own.

Nigeria, with a population of over 200m citizens, currently has one doctor to the over 5,000 citizens, which is way below the current World Health Organisation recommendation of one doctor to 600 citizens. Apart from the UK, other popular destinations for Nigeria-trained doctors include the US, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Australia.