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General News of Monday, 19 December 2022

Source: www.punchng.com

Address health sector’s brain drain, VC tells govt

Prof. Adesegun Fatusi Prof. Adesegun Fatusi

The Vice-Chancellor, the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo, Prof. Adesegun Fatusi, has bemoaned the failure of the government to address the factors compelling medical doctors and other health workers to leave the country, saying necessary action must be taken urgently to avert a looming disaster in the health sector.

Fatusi, a Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine, who said medical experts training doctors’ in the country were involved in the exodus, warned, “If we get to the point that there are no trainers to train doctors, we are doomed as a country. That is why we need to take action today if we are serious about our lives and our health situation in the country.”

The medical expert spoke at Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, on Friday after a lecture titled “The Legacy of Dreams” that he delivered during the induction for the fourth MBBS Class of 2022, where 47 fresh doctors were inducted into the medical profession.

Fatusi said, “The greatest fear for me is not even about doctors going today, the greatest fear is that tomorrow, we would not have those to train the doctors. That is the greatest fear we are not talking about, because when the trainers are gone, even if we have students, who will train them?”


The VC said that since the medical colleges and other institutions training doctors, nurses, medical laboratory scientists, and other health workers were no longer training for the local market, “our regulatory bodies must improve the number of spaces they give to schools so that if some of the medical workers travel abroad, we will still have enough here.”

He said, “For instance, EKSU College of Medicine just graduated 47; it should be encouraged to take up to 100, I think there should be an improvement. Other medical colleges should be encouraged to take more than what is available at present. In that way, when some people go abroad, there will be enough for the local market here.”

He also suggested a policy whereby “every doctor and health worker that is trained with government money should be bound for like five years before they are allowed to travel. If you are training them with public money, you should sign a bond with them. They should do some minimal service for the country that raised money to train them. If you are trained with public money, I think it is ethical that you should give back to the country.”

EKSU’s vice chancellor, Prof. Edward Olanipekun, said in his remarks that the institution’s College of Medicine would not look back in contributing its quota to the medical profession through the production of highly qualified and competent medical doctors.

The Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, Dr Tajudeen Sanusi, who was represented by the assistant registrar, Dr Abdul Enejo, who inducted the new doctors into the medical profession, advised them to uphold the oath they took in the interest of human lives and the profession.