Hospitals becoming empty as health workers resign daily, CMDs lament

The Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of Teaching Hospitals across the Country have raised an alarm that skilled health workers, including doctors, nurses are resigning at an alarming rate, while highlighting the growing burden of brain-drain in Nigeria.

Wasiu Adeyemo, Chief Medical Director, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Jesse Abiodun, Chief Medical Director, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, amomg others, raised the alarm at the 2025 Budget Defence Session before the FederalmHouse of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.

They expressed concerns that “hospitals are becoming empty”, while stressing the urgent need to address comcerns of health workers, especially renumeration.

Adeyemo informed the Committee that the rate at which medical workers were leaving the Country was alarming. He said, “People resign, retire not even retirement, resignation almost every day. Yes. In the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty.

“We need to do something about remuneration of all the health care workers oherwise, as government is putting a lot of money in infrastructure, we are going to have empty hospitals.”

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Also speaking, Abiodun, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), University College Hospital Ibadan, decried the delay in the release of budgeted funds to the hospital, which he said, had adversely affected its operations.

Giving the details of UCH’s 2024 budget, he said it had a capital appropriation of N5,593,110,394. He however added that only 38% of the funds was released, leaving a balance of 72% left.

He said, “We have the 72% left. Yes, we actually were among the last people to be batched for payment, and the payment started coming in actually in this December. We were able to even utilize this 38 percent because we had already done the cash plan before the release.”

Earlier, Patrick Umoh, Chairman, Federal House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions, lamented the precarious situation facing tertiary health institutions in the Country.

The Chairman ruled that, while Committee could not attend to all the health institutions on the day, it would collect all their correspondence and submissions from the outstanding teaching hospitals to work on for further deliberations.