The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has come out to oppose the proposed five-year compulsory service for medical and dental practitioners which is currently being considered at the National Assembly.
Africa Today News, New York reports that last Thursday a bill seeking a minimum of five years for doctors to practice in the country before being granted a full licence passed second reading at the House of Representatives.
Disturbed by the mass exodus of healthcare workers leaving Nigeria for greener pastures abroad, Honourable Ganiyu Johnson (APC/Lagos) who sponsored the bill said it seeks to amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act 2004, to address the brain drain in the Nigerian health sector.
However, speaking on Wednesday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, which was monitored by Africa Today News, New York the NMA President, Dr. Ojinma Uche, said the bill is not the solution to the pending crisis in the nation’s healthcare system.
He advised the Federal Government to address the root cause of the problem by urgently addressing the welfare of medical practitioners as well as tackling the security challenges that they grapple with.
Uche also lamented that some doctors have been the target of kidnappers and armed robbers, coupled with the low remuneration for them.
‘That is not the solution. You will discourage young medical students from reading Medicine. My own fear now is that it may have spooked the doctors that will be planning to leave in a year to start leaving immediately before they are clamped down,’ he stated.
‘If you now decide that Nigerian doctors cannot have full or permanent licence for five years after graduation, automatically, you have made them house officers for five years.’
The bill, if passed into law, will mandate medical and dental practitioners trained in the country to practice for at least five years before they are granted a full licence.