Gbajabiamila Urges Action Against Brain Drain In Health Sector

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has expressed sadness over the brain drain phenomenon that has hit the medical sector in the country.

Gbajabiamila said a situation whereby over 2,000 resident doctors had left the shores of the country, with about 800 leaving in the last eight months, bringing the average to about a hundred medical doctors leaving the country monthly in search of better working conditions, was unacceptable.

He, however, said the time had come for the government to holistically address the issues responsible for the negative trend.

Speaking during a courtesy call to his office by the executives of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), led by the president, Dr Emeka Orji, Gbajabiamila, however, cautioned that the issue of funding must be properly situated within the context of the prevailing global economic situation since Nigeria is not an island.

Responding to the figures of the resident doctors that had left Nigeria due to poor remuneration, Gbajabiamila said, “That is a very scary figure and that is not very encouraging for a country of over 200 million people to have the core of your medical team, your young ones, resident doctors, leaving in droves like that, definitely something must be wrong.

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“You have identified that to be the issue of emoluments and salaries, that’s always a very important issue. If you work, you must get paid, and you must get paid a good salary. It’s also important that we put those things in context in terms of everybody’s need to get paid, and that’s very important. That’s one of the reasons, if not the most important reason why you work, because we all have families to take care of. But we must put it in the Nigerian context in terms of the revenues available to the country.

“This is a worldwide phenomenon, right now everything is going down. Countries are not making as much revenue as they should.

“And I’m sure a lot of doctors that leave the shores of Nigeria in search of greener pastures, many of them will be happy, many of them will also realize it’s not so easy on the other side either.”