The Nigerian media is awash with a current report that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has accepted a coverage to retain medical consultants inside the nation to offer residents with much-needed high quality healthcare. This coverage could also be a response to the perceived mass exodus of Nigerian docs to different nations, particularly Europe, America and Saudi Arabia, the place they anticipate to realize job satisfaction and commensurate compensation for his or her companies.
This coverage reversal could also be a departure from earlier ones wherein the federal authorities overtly inspired medical consultants to hunt greener pastures exterior the nation or in different fields of endeavour. On the peak of that coverage implementation, Prof Isaac Adewole, himself a professor of medication and former Vice Chancellor of the College of Ibadan, as minister of Well being within the Muhammadu Buhari administration, had admonished Nigerian docs to take to farming as an alternative in response to complaints about unemployment amongst them. Then, Nigerians have been justifiably scandalised.
Not but accomplished, the Minister of Labour and Productiveness additionally in that administration, Dr Chris Ngige, himself a medical physician, boasted that the nation had sufficient docs and a few to spare for different nations. That was not precisely the precise state of affairs within the well being sector. President Buhari’s Particular Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, lent his voice to these justifying the development. In his opinion, nothing was fallacious with it, as that transfer would expose the docs to job satisfaction and experiences they’d have in any other case not acquired whereas serving in Nigeria.
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In equity to those authorities officers, there’s nothing fallacious with skilled medical personnel exploring alternatives in sectors apart from their subject of examine. In spite of everything, a one-time President of the World Financial institution, Jim Yong Kim, was an achieved medical physician. Within the Buhari administration, Okechukwu Enelamah was Minister of Trade, Commerce and Funding. He was additionally a medical physician who veered off to coach within the subject of enterprise. The purpose to be famous right here is that it should be out of private selection and conviction and never pushed by circumstances that place no worth on medication.
In our opinion, the assertions by authorities operatives referred to above beg the query of the true motive why these docs are abandoning their stethoscopes in Nigeria. The Secretary to the Authorities of the Federation (SGF) in that very same administration, Boss Mustapha, captured the explanation succinctly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when he publicly lamented that he didn’t know that the nation’s healthcare supply system was so decrepit.
As with different sectors of the nation’s life, the well being sector appears deserted by the authorities, who pay little greater than scant consideration to the companies or lack of them offered in these hospitals. That is deliberate as a result of these policymakers are availed of medical companies overseas; they and their households are taken care of by the state in what’s pejoratively known as medical tourism, which has remained a drain on the nation’s overseas reserve. Ranging from underfunding, the sector exists solely in title. On account of pervasive corruption, the little cash budgeted for well being companies is frittered away.
Within the course of, primary devices wanted for environment friendly service supply are insufficient, if not altogether non-existent. Consciously, medical companies have been ceded to the personal sector, the place the revenue motive drives service supply with the implication that the poor are intentionally out-maneuvered as the associated fee is past their attain.
It’s commonplace to note that, in some circumstances, docs in public amenities purchase the hand gloves they essentially have to placed on earlier than attending to sufferers. This important device must be taken as a right however will not be even obtainable. That may give one a transparent perception into what obtains in different areas of healthcare supply system. Compounding this dreary state of affairs, in our opinion, is the truth that docs within the nation are overworked and grossly underpaid. The working circumstances in Nigerian hospitals make job gives from overseas seem very engaging and professionally fulfilling.
From this attitude, we posit that any coverage restraining docs from looking for fulfilment elsewhere is unhelpful and repugnant to the provisions of labour legal guidelines within the nation and internationally, which assure free entry and free exit. Aside from docs skilled and bonded by the federal government, it’s improper and even unlawful to cease anybody, not simply docs, from looking for skilled enhancement the place they’re obtainable. It’s towards all recognized tenets of pure justice, fairness, and good conscience, to not point out the infringement of their basic rights as enshrined within the Structure.
As a substitute of setting up any such coverage, the federal government ought to take a tough have a look at the sector and establish areas that want enchancment by way of provision of infrastructure, capability constructing, remuneration and compensation.
Moreover, the federal government should finish the present follow of sending its officers overseas for medical therapy. The sources deployed in such wastages must be channelled in the direction of making the healthcare system conducive to Nigerians.
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