Jimisayo Opanuga
Nigerians are one of the largest national groups working within the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, according to a recent NHS infographic.
Data posted on X on Saturday shows that Nigerians rank as the sixth largest national group, with over 10,494 staff members contributing to the UK’s healthcare workforce.
The NHS captioned the graphic “One NHS, Many Nationalities” and expressed gratitude to all those who keep the health service running, stating, “One NHS, many nationalities. Huge thanks to every single person who helps keep the NHS going.”
The United Kingdom leads the list with over 1.1 million staff, followed by India (32,117), the Philippines (25,423), Ireland (14,151), and Poland (10,520).
Nigeria ranks ahead of Portugal (7,831), Italy (6,660), Spain (5,405), Romania (5,251), Pakistan (4,902), Zimbabwe (4,780), and Ghana (3,395).
Among African countries, Nigerians rank ahead of Egyptians (2,895), South Africans (1,829), Mauritians (1,308), Sudanese (1,003), Kenyans (894), Ugandans (648), Sierra Leoneans (596), Zambians (498), and Nigeriens (418).
Crisis at home
However, Nigeria is currently struggling with a mass exodus of medical professionals. Over the years, health workers have often sought opportunities abroad due to factors such as inadequate equipment, worsening insecurity, poor working conditions, and low salaries.
The federal government recently estimated that around 15,000 to 16,000 doctors have left the country in the last five years, seeking opportunities abroad, according to Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare. Pate disclosed this on Sunday, March 10, during an interview on Channels Television.
Pate said the brain drain has robbed the health sector of its best talent, but he affirmed that the government is working to expand training schemes and motivate those who choose to stay and serve their country.
The minister stated that although there are 300,000 health professionals in Nigeria, only 55,000 of them are doctors.
He said, “There are about 300,000 health professionals working in Nigeria today in all cadres…. 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 licensed 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 skills 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 population. These are numbers that you can verify. In Lagos, it is about 4.6, even though the average is 2.2 by 10,000.”
The Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria reports that over 1,000 consultants left the country between 2019 and 2023.
Similarly, the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors documented over 900 members departing for Europe in just the first nine months of 2023.
Emigration
According to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the number of international migrants from Nigeria in 2020, the latest year for which figures are available, was 1.7 million, up from 990,000 a decade earlier.
Nigerian authorities record the number of citizens travelling in and out but do not register whether departing citizens are leaving to work or live permanently abroad, as reported by AFP.
As a result, figures for net migration and countries of destination are hard to come by.
However, data from countries that issue work visas provides an idea of where Nigerian migrants are heading.
Most stay within sub-Saharan Africa, but the numbers heading to Europe and North America have increased considerably in recent years.
British statistics show that in 2019 — the year before Covid struck — about 14,000 UK study and work visas were issued to Nigerian nationals. That number, which includes dependents, almost quadrupled in 2021.
Skilled workers from the healthcare sector were the largest recipients, with more than 16,000 visas out of about 22,000 granted since January 2021.
In Canada, more than 15,000 Nigerians were granted permanent residence in 2021, compared to about 4,400 five years prior.
FG solution
To combat this trend, the federal government recently increased the enrollment quota in medical, nursing, and other health professional schools by 100 percent, doubling it from 28,000 to 64,000 within one year.
“We have doubled the intake, the enrolment, the quotas of medical schools, nursing schools, and other health professionals’ schools from an enrollment target of 28,000 a year to 64,000 now,” Pate announced.
“That is just the first step. The education sector will have to play its role. The states will have to improve the infrastructure, training, and tools to produce more healthcare workers because we need to produce more healthcare workforce given that we’re losing some so that we can serve the population of this country.”
