Amidst the challenge posed to the nation’s health sector by Nigerian doctors migrating abroad, former President Olusegun Obasanjo says higher incentives is the solution to the problem.
According to the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, hundreds of doctors leaves the country annually, to seek better opportunities in Europe, United States and Middle East where they receive good pay.
The former president said the problem will continue except the national and sub-national governments offer the doctors good pay and other incentives .
Obasanjo spoke on Monday at the commissioning of a hospital in Zamfara State, named after a former governor of the state, Ahmed Yerima.
He said apart from infrastructure and equipment medical personnel are required to keep the country’s health sector functional, noting that doctors will stop searching for greener pastures abroad if they are taken care of. .
Obasanjo: “For hospitals, especially when many Nigerians who have been trained as medical personnel are ‘japa-ing’, which is going out of the country, looking for better conditions, how do you hold them here? You have to give them a bit of incentive.
“We need all the personnel that we can have because our hospitals have to deliver. You need the right environment and that is the refurbishing, renovation but you need the right equipment, and then you need the personnel.”
Speaking recently in Abuja, the nation’s capital the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Pate, said over 16,000 Nigerian doctors have left the country in the last seven years to seek for opportunity abroad.
He said this happened despite the huge amount spent by the government training the doctors. The minister said the nation spends at least $21,000 training one doctor.
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