The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has disclosed that, challenged by the perceived poor condition of service in the Nigerian Health sector coupled with deteriorating health facilities it has observed that many medical Doctors are abandoning the country in search of greener pasture.
The Punch launched a private investigation and found out that the exodus has increased greatly this last two years, with countries such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and United Kingdom as choice destinations.
Accordingly, the mass resignation is gradually transferring the workload to those who have chosen to stay especially in the government health facilities with an antecedent increase in pressure.
The NMA disclosed in an interview with Journalist that in urban centres a medical doctor attends to at least 100 patients per day which is stressful compared to best world practice.
The Chairman of the NMA, Dr. Saliu Oseni while speaking to Journalist revealed that, the Lagos state being the state with the highest number of medical doctors receives at least between 50 – 60 resignation letter from the said medical practitioners in every six months which translate to an average of ten(10) people resigning in every month.
The Chairman laments that failure of government at all level of governance has contributed massively to the menace, while failure to replace the ones leaving is greatly giving more stress to those who have chosen to stay.
“The situation is affecting our members as they are being overworked. Although we have a lot of doctors that have left the country, we still have a lot of unemployed doctors. Some of the hospitals have not employed or replaced doctors that have left the system in the last two years,” Oseni said.
Oseni revealed that the global practice of Doctor to population by ratio is 1:500, however, this is not obtainable in our climate as at present we have a ratio of 1:5000 which is outrageous.
“The effects are so enormous that some of our doctors are now committing suicide because of the pressure of work. Poor service delivery is imminent because we are overworked, and then the patents are the ones suffering for this the chairman added.
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