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The Vice Chancellor of the Elizade University, Ilara Mokin, Ondo State, Prof Kayode Ijadunola, has charged both the federal and state governments to create an enabling environment for doctors and other health workers to discourage them from leaving the country.
Ijadunola, who noted that many doctors and other health professionals had left the shore of the country for greener pastures abroad, said no legislation would bar them from traveling abroad for greener pastures.
He stated this at the induction of the 23 newly graduated professional nurses into the Nurses and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, held on the campus of the institution on Wednesday.
According to him, Nigeria is producing a significant number of health workers today, including doctors and nurses but the challenge of retaining those trained after their graduation is a big issue.
He, however, urged the governments to encourage those who are still at home with good remuneration and excellent conditions of service.
He said, “Globally, there is a shortage of health manpower, whether they are doctors, nurses or any other profession in health-related areas, which was made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic where a significant number of health workers retired, they just left the profession and walked away, due to the mental fatigue they burn out and all the things that accompanied the COVID-19 era.
“A number of them left, and people are looking for doctors and nurses all over the world, so whatever we produced, and we don’t treat them well, the pay, conditions of service, security in the system, and other things.
“Sometimes when our governments say they want to stop professional doctors from leaving, they want to attract the ones from outside from coming back, it is the mirage of the century because the ones at home are leaving and you are saying you want to bring back the ones from outside who are so afraid of the security situation
“I will be happy if, in two years, 10 per cent of those who graduated today are still here because as we are producing them, they are leaving; that is the pain of our society today. The facilities where we work are not conducive, the equipment is not there, the environment is toxic, and health workers remain the target of the bandit.”
Ijadunola, however, stated that the proposal by the National Assembly to retain health workers in the country for five years after graduation would not be possible due to the amount of money spent in training them, which may not be easily recouped.
In her remarks, the Vice Chancellor of the Achievers University, Prof . Omolola Irinoye, identified inappropriate salaries for health workers and poor work environments as some of the reasons for health workers to seek greener pastures abroad.
Irinoye said, “People must be paid to commensurate with the nature of the work they do and whenever you see anybody doing shifting duties, you distort their rhythm. What people do in many places is compensate people for the nature of the work they do. People are running out because we are not meeting their essential needs. Where they are running to is not as if they are doing free jobs; they get reasonable money that can enable them to meet their family needs.
“Our facilities are problematic. Things people need to work on are not there. If the health professionals work according to their training, we won’t have anybody working in our health facilities again. What we have in our laboratories is not available in the hospitals, making them improvise.
“We have hospitals without enough bedsheets. There are hospitals without electricity. I have been to a teaching hospital where nurses used the light on their phones to attend to patients. The working environment is not good enough for medical personnel.
“We have to look at our human resources, we have to look at our facilities. We have hospitals without water and we are talking about infection control. We have to do a lot of things that will reduce people going to hospitals at the community level to reduce infection and chronic diseases.”
English (US) ·