NNEWI—FORMER Secretary-General to the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, yesterday said that over 4,765 Nigerian doctors are currently working in the United Kingdom, UK, and constitute 1.7 per cent of the total of the UK medical workforce.
He also revealed that highly qualified and competent Nigerian doctors have equally migrated to the United States of America, Saudi Arabia and Canada, among other countries across the globe for work, thereby, “causing a haemorrhage in the nation’s health sector, which is part of the larger problem of brain drain being experienced by the country on account of the decay and depreciation in its federal and state institutions.”
Chief Anyaoku disclosed this in a keynote address he presented during the 110 years anniversary and launching of an ultra-modern magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI, centre of Iyi-Enu Mission Hospital, established in 1907, in Ogidi, Idemili North Local Government Area, Anambra State.
Chief Anyaoku who is the Adazie Obosi, said Nigeria loses about N175 billion naira on medical tourism annually, a figure that is more than 50 per cent of the Federal Government’s proposal for the health sector in the 2018 budget.
