Abdullahi Dahiru
President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet is going to have the highest number of medical Doctors than and previous federal cabinet. Already four medical Doctors have been screened by the senate-Mohammed Pate, Isiak Salako, Batte Edu And Yusuf Sununu. Another medical Docor Mariya Mahmoud is possibly going to be screened today.
These Doctors that wete nominated to the cabinet are highly skilled. All of them have done postgraduate trainings and gathered experience over the years. Two of them are even professors.
I watched the screening of three of the ones already screened by the senate. A recurrent question asked by the senators was how to reduce the brain drain haemorrhage of medical d
Doctors from Nigeria to other countries. The current Doctor/patient ratio is about 1:10,000.
But I think the senators were asking this question just as a mundane thing. The problem seem to defy solution. In the last 3 years alone, how many doctors have left the country to middle east, Europe and America?
Salary is a major issue but not the only issue. People used to mention it as the main problem. But even in Nigeria there is discrepancy of salary between Doctors working with federal government and those working for state governments. So there is ‘internal’ brain drain between state services and federal service. There is discrepancy between the salary of medical Doctors working in the university as lecturers and those working as consultants alone for the teaching hospitals and federal medical centres. How can we adsress that and ensure pay parity among Doctors across different services?
Perhaps, government need to increase the intake of medical students into the universities to produce more Doctors. The government has established universities of medical sciencies in the geopolitical zones, but how long would it take to see result from those newly established universities? Perhaps we need to increase intake in the already existing universities.
People talk of brain drain alone as if all the Doctors we have in the country are already employed. There is unemployment in the health care service. 21 years ago when we graduated, people have to seek for introduction letters from influencial people to get employed as a house officer which is mandatory service before a Doctor get licensed. I waited for six month before starting housemanship. Then after finishing house job, my name was ommitted in the NYSC mobilization. So I waited for another six month. Already one year was lost between starting housemanship and completion of NYSC. I waited for another two years after passing the primaries to start residency training because there was no slot in the neighbouring teaching hospitals. This can be frustrating.
A Doctor can finish residency training and start roaming the hospitals looking for placement because His training institution may not have a job for him. If he can’t get one in the shortest possible time, what happens? If there are vacancies in Saudi Arabia for him, won’t he leave?
Currently, the resident Doctors association comprising about 16,000 Doctors has embarked on strie to demand pay increase, payment of training allowances and other issues of improved welfare. Government has threatened to apply ‘no work no pay’ rule on them. The Doctors would start demonstration this week. These kind of frustrations would further excercebate the crisis.
So if government want to tackle the issue of brain drain in health care service, there should be sincerity of purpose not just talking for talking sense.
Abdullahi Dahiru is a medical Doctor
