No fewer than 727 medical doctors trained in Nigeria relocated to the United Kingdom between December 2021 and May 2022, The PUNCH reports.
The figure was contained in data obtained by our correspondent from the website of the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom on the number of foreign doctors working in the UK.
The data showed that Nigeria is the country with the third highest number of foreign doctors working in the UK, coming behind only India and Pakistan.
As of November 2021, 8,983 Nigerian trained doctors were working in the UK.
But another 727 were licensed between December 2021 and April 2022.
That brought the total number of Nigerian doctors in the UK to 9,710.
The PUNCH reports that the development is coming at a time the Federal Government failed to pay the new hazard allowance to medical doctors and other categories of health workers.
The PUNCH had in December 2021 reported how the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission in a circular SWC/S04/S.218/11/406, announced that the government had reviewed hazard allowance following engagements with the unions and associations in the health sector.
The President of the Medical and Dental Consultant Association of Nigeria, Dr Victor Makanjuola, told our correspondent that the government had yet to begin the implementation.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Olorunnimbe Mamora, did not reply to messages sent to him on the issue when filing this report.
When The PUNCH reached out to the spokesman to the Minister of Finance, Yinusa Tanko, he simply said, “I do not know why a medical enquiry has to be channelled to Ministry of Finance.”
The PUNCH had in 2021 reported how the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors, the MDCAN, Joint Health Sector Unions and some other affiliates of the Nigerian Medical Association had fought for the review of the hazard allowance rate.
The NMA had also warned the government of the high level of brain drain which it said had continued to collapse the nation’s health sector.
The PUNCH also reported that Saudi Arabia had arranged for a recruitment exercise for Nigerian medical consultants during an industrial action by the resident doctors.
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