Nigeria needs 303,000 doctors to meet WHO’s standard

Nigeria needs about 303,000 medical doctors to meet World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standard says a new survey by the Nigerian polling organisation (NOIPolls), to avert health challenges.

This implies that this puts at risk rural patients who suffer because of an urban-to-rural doctor density ratio and Nigeria’s poor doctor-population ratio of 1:6000 as compared with the WHO standards of 1:1000.

The WHO study on Medical Doctors in each country, by every 1,000 people, as published by an index-based Twitter page, Spectator’s Index reveals that Nigeria produces 0.37 Medical Doctors in every 1,000 people.

In a bid to measure the scope of the trend in emigration of the Nigerian healthcare workforce, particularly medical doctor issue that has been a lingering problem in the country, the organisation spots an analysis of the doctors’ emigration Survey reports on the twitter handle of NOIPolls.

“Finding reveals that Nigeria needs 303,000 doctors to meet the WHO Standard of doctors to patients’ population, as at 2017 we only had 72,000 doctors registered with the medical and dental council of Nigeria, out of the 72,000, only about 35,000 are in Nigeria,” said Chike Nwangwu, CEO of NOIPolls Limited, a Nigerian public opinion polling company.

Nwangwu further said, “If the issues pointed out by the doctors were 50 percent addressed, the impact in terms of doctors that will be willing to stay back will be a lot because most people are forced to move because they see colleagues who have moved and are doing better.

“There is an urgent need to look into the current doctor to patient population in Nigeria. To be specific, 91% of junior level doctors, 83% of mid-level doctors and 73% of senior doctors are considering work opportunities outside Nigeria, this figures are alarming,” he said.

The survey conducted on medical doctors is to assess the prevalence with which medical doctors pursue work opportunities abroad and probable reasons why.

It found that at least 10 in 26 doctors interviewed mentioned Low work satisfaction as the foremost reason doctors pursued work opportunities abroad and many even placed low work satisfaction above poor remuneration.

Nwangwu added that the doctors’ emigration Survey found that 88% of medical doctors interviewed said they were currently considering work opportunities abroad; and this particular finding cuts across the junior, mid-level and senior level doctors in both public and private medical institutions.

“The major reasons most doctors gave for emigrating included; better facilities and work environment, higher remuneration, career progression and professional advancement, and better quality of life.

“We are at a critical point in the health sector in Nigeria where we need to consider and do something to stop the brain drain of doctors leaving the country,” he said.

The findings also revealed that the reasons for the continuous brain drain in the health sector include challenges such as high taxes and deduction from salary (98 percent), low work satisfaction (92 percent), poor salaries and emoluments (91 percent) and the huge knowledge gap in the sector amongst others.

“Only 25 percent of doctors’ surveyed mentioned increased salaries as a means of discouraging doctors’ emigration, most doctors advocated for better financing of the health sector.

“If the government can commit 15 percent of the entire budget to the health sector, it will help in moving the health sector in the right direction,” said Nwangwu.

In comparison, other Africa countries such as Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Togo, Liberia, Madagascar and Malawi have all reportedly hit the target, spending between 13 per cent and 18 per cent of their annual budgets on health, according to data compiled by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO).

Nigeria’s health system is beleaguered by challenges like poor funding and governance, inadequate infrastructure, high maternal and child mortality, poor primary health facilities, malnutrition, poor health emergency responses. It is not likely that these will change in the near future given the quality of interventions so far.

‘’The terribly low doctor-patient ratio is one of the reasons why we have a lot of quacks within the medical profession. And a lot of Nigerians are dying in the hands of these quacks,” said Francis Faduyile, president, Nigeria Medical Association, told BusinessDay.

Larne Yusuf a medical practitioner bases in Lagos said,  in the last couple of years, the country’s health sector has been suffering massive brain drain and has lost a lot of good doctors and nurses who have emigrated. This lingering problem in the country has to be tackled,” said Yusuf.