The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, has revealed that Nigeria has lost about 16,000 doctors to Japa in the last five years, News About Nigeria reports.
The minister, who said this on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Sunday, also revealed that Nigeria still has about 55,000 licenced doctors to attend to the growing population of patients.
Pate also lamented the impact of the brain drain syndrome on the nation’s health sector, as ‘japa’ is gradually becoming the order of the day and the dream of many doctors.
Speaking further, he noted that the majority of doctors who are still in Nigeria are now working in places like Lagos and Abuja, leaving other states of the Federation with little to no professional doctors.
He said, “We did an assessment and discovered we have 85,000 to 90,000 registered Nigerian doctors. Not all of them are in the country. Some are in the diaspora, especially in the US and UK. But there are 55,000 licenced doctors in the country. The issue overall, in terms of health professionals, is that they are not enough. They are insufficient in terms of the skill mix.
“Can you believe most of the highly skilled professional doctors are in Lagos, Abuja, and a few urban centres? There is a huge distribution issue. The population of doctors overall is about 7,600 in Lagos and 4,700 or thereabout in Abuja. The doctor-to-population ratio in Abuja is 14.7 per 10,000 people. These are numbers that you can verify. In Lagos, it is about 4.6, even though the average is 2.2 by 10,000.”
He, however, noted that the government is working tirelessly towards giving its best to doctors who have decided to stay back and serve their fatherland.
