Nigerian healthcare workers' exodus: empty hospitals loom (3 February 2022)

Summary

An article* from Ehi Iden, hub topic leader, discussing the Nigerian healthcare workforce crisis.

Content

"It is so sad what the future of healthcare in Nigeria will look like in the coming years, everyone may feel so unconcerned now but have in mind, a time will come soon when we have patients lined up to be attended to by just a handful of nurses and doctors.

According to WHO, global health workforce is conservatively estimated to be just a little over 59 million. Africa has an average of 1,640,000, which is the lowest when compared with other regions. The world has a shortage of more than 4 million doctors, nurses, midwives and others, and Africa has the highest number of shortages. The African continent needs about 139 percentage increase, yet the few ones we have are fast relocating for better paying jobs in UK, UAE, Canada and America.

I took time to build this background so we can all understand the enormity of the concern.

For over one week now, most of the healthcare workers I know are hardly reachable through phone calls, I end up sending them WhatsApp messages and they respond to me they are now in the UK. Today was particularly bad for me when all messages i sent came with confirmation "I now work in UK". The few ones that have not left are waiting for one or two documents to aid their exit.

We have lost loads of Nigerian healthcare workers to the West and our government does not seem to care what will hit us in the future. I was told today that our Nurses in Government Hospitals leave in droves of sometimes 30 nurses at once. The time cometh when we will visit hospitals and not have healthcare workers to attend to us. This makes me sad!

Saudi Arabia came here to take our good hands under our nose, the government was quiet and perhaps even cheering the move. The Minister of Labour who is a doctor told us physicians can go into agriculture. Careless and senseless statements.

An average Nigerian nurse in the UK receives 60 - 80,000 GBP per annum. In Nigeria, an average monthly salary of a Senior Matron is barely N230,000.00.

In the future, it becomes unsafe to fall ill because the healthcare workers trained to look after you are all abroad at the service of foreign government and ailing African politicians and money bags!

When you do not value what you have, your neighbour will take it from you and place a premium on it.

Having a team of healthcare workers to attend to one patient in need of surgery like this will soon become luxury."

*This article was first published on LinkedIn.