New Report Reveals That Only 42,000 Out Of The 75,000 Licensed Doctors By The NMA Are In Nigeria To Cater For The Over 200 Million People

Francis Faduyile, the president of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) has revealed that only 42,000 out of the 75,000 registered Doctors by the association are presently working in Nigeria.

The NMA president further revealed that the 33,000 missings have left for greener pastures, which implies that Nigeria has one of the worst health indices in the world.

According to ThisDay Newspaper, Faduyile attributed this massive movement of Nigerian Doctors to a high rate of insecurity, bad roads, unemployment, poor job satisfaction, and the poor healthcare system.

The NMA president gave an account of the collapsed healthcare system;

“In rural communities, we have one doctor attends to 22,000 people, while one doctor attends to 10,000 or 12,000 people in towns and cities. However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that for any country to have a balanced ration, that country must have a doctor to 600 patients

“Doctors in Nigeria and other healthcare workers like pharmacists and nurses are leaving the country in their large numbers because of the poor healthcare system and lack of job satisfaction.

“For example, the UK alone employs about 12 Nigerian doctors weekly. If Nigeria graduates 3,000 doctors yearly, without them leaving this country, it will take Nigeria about 25-years to attain the WHO estimate of one doctor per 600 persons.

Nigeria is losing some of its most talented, most educated and professional healthcare handlers to countries like Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, and other countries.

“This is
because the Government is not showing concern about giving adequate priority to
lack of equipment to intervene and save lives, low funding, no appropriate
employment, insecurity, bad roads, among other challenges.

“Therefore, this is affecting the country as more people are suffering due to unavailability of healthcare workers, people are losing their lives as a result of the poor healthcare system and Nigeria has one of the worst healthcare indices around the world” he affirms