The Chief Medical Director, Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti, Prof. Adekunle Ajayi, has urged stakeholders in the country’s health sector to fashion out ways to address brain drain in the sector to avert a looming disaster.
Ajayi, who said that “all stakeholders must quickly come together to address this emerging workforce disaster and not just merely gallivanting or lamenting around or about it”, harped on the need to begin to look towards the specific manpower needs of Nigeria in the health sector.
The Professor of Medicine, who spoke on Friday at FETHI during the 2022 Christmas Carol Service and long service awards for 82 staff members of the facility who had served for 20 years, assured workers of the hospital of a better deal in 2023.
He said, “This year, the management board promoted 541 members of staff, eligible staff enjoyed the support of the board for in-service training while 281 new staff members were recruited following approval from the Head of Service of the Federation. “This had been done to address massive egress of our staff in search of greener pastures outside Nigeria, even though just like a sieve, the more we add, the more we lose the very best hands to the scourge of brain drain.”
The CMD said something drastic needed to be done to address the brain drain which he said was affecting those giving services in hospitals, those lecturing the students who would want to become health professionals and at the same time badly affecting service delivery in the hospital setting and as well service delivery in terms medical education.
He added, “I think we must go back and look at the World Health Organisation’s code on recruitment of health workers internationally. If you look at the code, it talks about a lot of international diplomacy, and what we can do to ensure that we do not lose everything even if our people decide to go.
Of course, production in terms of health workforce must increase. With this, also we must begin to look at the specific needs of this country.
“Stakeholders, government, non-governmental organisations, institutions must come together and address this menace before it becomes a disaster.”