Former Chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, FCT Chapter, Dr Charles Ugwuanyi, says Nigeria’s socioeconomic situation is a strong incentive for medical brain drain.
Dr Ugwuanyi said this on Thursday when he featured in an interview on Arise Television monitored by DAILY POST.
He said this goes beyond the amount of money doctors earn, focusing on the work environment, adding that in the last 7 years, about 20,000 doctors have left Nigeria for jobs abroad.
According to him, Nigeria has less than 40,000 practising doctors for over 200 million people.
“Situating this situation to the peculiarities that we find in the medical industry today, you find out that the Nigerian doctor is faced with a lot of push factors at the local level, and they have quite some attractive pull factors to those climbs where they migrate to.
“The core problem here has to border on the socio economic situation in the country, and also the security challenges. If you look at the socio economic factors, the main thing does not even go beyond the amount of money that they earn.
“It also borders on the work environment. Work environment has to do with job satisfaction. What is the very basic reason someone decides to be a doctor? It is not for you to become a rich man. There’s no doctor who has an ambition to become a very rich man.
“If you want to be a very rich man, we’re told in medical school that you should go and do business or perhaps politics. It is the passion to make someone well that keeps us to continue to perform our duties as doctors, and now we don’t have an enabled environment, where your prey is decaying by the day,” he said.
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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