Kenyan doctors march to the Ministry of Health headquarters demanding better wages and working conditions in the capital Nairobi on April 9, 2024. (Photo by SIMON MAINA/AFP, Getty Images)
Faced with soaring inflation, low wages and a strained health care system, thousands of doctors and nurses leave Nigeria every year in search of better opportunities abroad.
According to Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria's Minister of Health, between 15,000 and 16,000 doctors have retired in the past five years. He said the country had only 55,000 doctors for a population of 220 million.
The exodus of medical professionals puts an additional burden on those who remain, making it difficult for students considering their futures to make choices.
On his way to the Lagos State University Faculty of Medicine, second-year medical student Hassan Adewunmi said he was reluctantly ready to look for work elsewhere after graduation.
“The elite prefer to receive treatment abroad rather than in Nigeria. That says a lot about the state of hospitals in this country,” Adewunmi said.
“And we ask why doctors and nurses don't want to stay.”
Doctors in public hospitals and some private hospitals in Nigeria earn between $2,000 and $4,000 a year, with an average monthly income of about $200, said Moses Onwubya, president of the Medical Students Association of Nigeria.
Most healthcare workers are based in major cities. The country's most populous city, Lagos, has about 7,600 doctors, while the capital, Abuja, has about 4,700 doctors, the health minister said. The rest of Nigeria has about 2 doctors per 10,000 people.
Dele Abdullahi, president of the Resident Physicians Association of Nigeria and a general practitioner at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital in southwestern Nigeria, said: “Facilities in the country are substandard and understaffed, resulting in large-scale There is a massive burnout syndrome.”
In 2020, the World Health Organization added Nigeria to its red list of states facing acute shortages of doctors and nurses.
Medical workers are “mainly heading to the UK, Canada and the US, but increasingly to Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia. They are also going to Scandinavia,” Onwubuya said.
Around 5,000 doctors immigrated to the UK between 2015 and 2021, according to the Center for Development Research Projects, a Nigerian non-profit organization.
To limit brain drain, Rep. Ganiyu Johnson has proposed legislation in 2023 that would require medical graduates to work in Nigeria for five years before obtaining a full medical license. Congress has not yet passed the bill, but it has been heavily criticized by medical groups.
On March 1st, the law regarding nurses was amended to require them to work in Nigeria for at least two years before leaving the country.
“We need to increase salaries, buy equipment, renovate hospitals and create scholarships for students. That's what the government should do, not this kind of legislation,” said Stella Naomi, a private dental nurse.・Mr. Oluwadare said. Even with 10 years of experience, she says her monthly income is about $200.
She is preparing to join her husband, an orthodontist, who immigrated to Canada in 2022.
Chomas Abiodun, a nurse at a private hospital in Lagos, said she feared future generations of students would suffer.
“If all the qualified professionals leave the country, who will teach in schools or supervise young people during internships in hospitals?” she said.
“Something has to change.”
The Minister of Health said in March that he would consider raising salaries for medical professionals, but there is no sign yet that Nigeria has been able to stop mass turnover.
Meanwhile, hundreds of hospital doctors in Kenya took to the streets of the capital Nairobi on Tuesday to demonstrate as a nationwide doctors' strike nears its fourth week.
About a dozen riot police in pickup trucks were out to monitor the protests, but authorities did not give them permission to do so.
The 7,000 members of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) have been on strike since March 13, demanding better wages and working conditions, disrupting medical care in the country's 57 public hospitals. It is occurring.
Doctors wearing white coats marched to the Ministry of Health, chanting “Solidarity forever” and blocked the entrance gate.
“We would be happy to return to the hospital, but the efforts being made by the government are not enough to end the human suffering,” KMPDU Deputy Executive Director Dennis Miskera said.
Last week, the union rejected government proposals that included payment of arrears under the 2017 collective bargaining agreement and permanent employment for trainee doctors.
The Labor Court ordered the union to halt the strike in March and last week set a 14-day deadline for negotiations to end the deadlock.
Kenyan President William Ruto, who has embarked on cost-cutting measures since taking office in 2022, on Sunday ruled out further concessions.
“We can’t keep spending money we don’t have,” he said.
“I tell my physician friends, we value the service they give to our nation, but we have to live within our means.”
Poor pay and working conditions are driving an exodus of Kenyan doctors to other African countries and further afield.
In 2017, Kenyan doctors staged a devastating 100-day nationwide strike that closed public hospitals and left patients without basic medical care.
Dozens of patients died due to lack of access to treatment during the strike, which ended after a collective bargaining agreement was reached.
But doctors accuse the government of reneging on parts of the agreement, leading to the latest strike.
—AFP
