Prof. Aminu Muhammad who is the President of the Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria, has pointed out that it would take Nigeria 10 years to replace the 500 Doctors who recently left Nigeria in search of greener pastures.
Muhammad was addressing on Sunday against a backdrop of results by the association from 50 out of 80 chapters that showed no less than 500 medical professionals have departed the shore of Nigeria for the outside world.
The president bemoaned that the worrisome departure of Specialists out of the country painted a bleak future for the health sector in the nation while answering queries from newsmen immediately after he presented a Communiqué of the Biennial Delegates Meeting of the Association held in Kano.
He stressed that according to statistics available to them, more than 500 Medical Consultants have migrated out of the country in search of greener pastures elsewhere.
According to him, Nigeria has continued to produce the finest and highest numbers of clinical experts, graduates, and postgraduates in sub-Saharan Africa, who are currently breaking records all over the world.
The communique reads, ‘Medical education is under threat, mainly due to the largest number of specialists and trainers migrating to other climes.’
‘The challenges of brain drain in the health sector have remained unabated with the migration of highly skilled health care professionals not only out of Africa but, also to neighboring west Africa’
The communique has called for a synergy between teaching hospitals, universities, and regulatory bodies which has contributed to the failure to optimise the potential for increasing the quality of medical students.
Similarly, Africa Today News, New York reports that the communique urged the government to organise all stakeholders towards revamping Nigeria’s healthcare system through the provision of affordable and accessible healthcare delivery in the country.