POSTGRADUATE MEDICAL COLLEGE EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER BRAIN DRAIN IN HEALTH SECTOR: DR AKIN 20-09-23
By Sadiq Aminu The National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria has expressed concern at the rate at which medical doctors are leaving the country in search of greener pastures as this has resulted to a decline in the number of doctors enrolling in the College for their post graduate training.
The College also expressed disappointment at the rate at which Specialist Doctors trained in the College are leaving the country.
The College President, Dr. Akin Osibogun expressed these concerns at a news briefing in Ijanikin, Lagos.
He said that most graduates of medical schools in Nigeria that were supposed to enrol in the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria for their advanced Medical trainings so as to be qualified as specialists on their field of study were leaving the country.
He stressed that apart from loosing Nigerian doctors to the western countries, some African countries had also been attracting specialist doctors trained in the country to their domain to boost their medical service delivery.
He therefore, advised state and federal governments to provide necessary incentives and a conducive working environment for doctors to practice their profession in the country so as to discourage them from leaving the country in search of a better renumeration and condition of service.
Dr. Osibogun said the action plan should be to Train the Specialist doctors and Retain them in the country so as to address the deficit of Specialist doctors in the nation’s public health institutions in particular.
Speaking on the achievements recorded by the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria in the last forty-four years of living up to its mandate as the only institution charged with the responsibility of training Specialist doctors in Nigeria, Dr. Osibogun said that the College had not done badly as it had trained more than eighty- thousand specialists since its existence and had carried out so many researches that had made impact on the nation’s health sector.
The College President stressed that another set of research carried out in four hundred and fifty areas would be presented at the College’s next Convocation ceremony.
Dr. Osibogun however, urged the federal government to continue to provide necessary training facilities in teaching hospitals across the country which serve as the teaching base for doctors undergoing training in the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria.