Nigeria is among the top 13th African countries whose citizens want to emigrate to Europe and other nations on account of poverty and or hardship with a 31% rate, says a survey conducted by Afrobarometer. While migration can have positive effects filling labor gaps in destination countries and producing remittances to help families back home –it can also have negative consequences.
It was recently reported that no less than 5,405 Nigerian-trained doctors and nurses are currently working with the National Health Services (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK). The figure, released by the British Government, revealed that Nigerian medics constitute 3.9% of the 137,000 foreign staff of 202 nationalities working alongside British doctors and nurses.
In the hunt for better conditions, medical professionals leave the country and this growth has exacerbated the physician-patient ratio in Nigeria from 1 to 4,000 to 1 to 5,000, contrary to the WHO recommendation of 1 to 600. The physician-to-patient ratio in the U.K. is 1 to 300. Economic loss due to the emigration of doctors shows that approximately 18,960 medical doctors from 14 African countries work in developed countries.
Approximately 54.2% of them work in the United Kingdom, 28.3% work in the USA, 10.3% work in Canada, 4.8% work in Australia, 1.4% work in Portugal, and 1% work in Germany. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) the regulatory body for nurses, midwives, and specialist community public health nurses throughout the United Kingdom, recorded that about 18,349 nurses from the African region.
