The Medical Director of the Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Yaba, Lagos State, Dr Olugbenga Owoeye, has said that three of every five doctors trained in Nigeria migrate abroad.
He made the disclosure while speaking on the hospital’s efforts to retrain and retain experts.
Owoeye, who decried the effects of brain drain in the hospital, said it had resulted to drastic reduction of manpower.
According to him, to close the vacuum created by the constant migration of the psychiatric practitioners abroad, the hospital has resolved to be training more doctors.
He said that the hospital had trained no fewer than 90 consultant psychiatric doctors and nurses, who were practising in various states in the country and abroad.
“Brain-drain is affecting the psychiatric profession more than other professions in terms of the psychiatric doctors, including other caregivers and health workers in the field.
“For every five psychiatric doctors trained in Nigeria, three out of them leave the country to practice abroad.
“To this end, we have resolved to be training more doctors in order to fill the gaps created as a result of the exodus of the doctors.
“So far, not less than 90 consultant psychiatrists have been trained by the hospital,” Owoeye said.
Owoeye identified general upgrading of the hospital by way of equipping it with required and modern facilities, as well as training programmes, as some of the things being done to encourage health workers.
He listed the renovation of the drug rehabilitation centre of the facility, provision of intensive care units and the establishment of a new functional stand-alone molecular laboratory, as efforts made to aid and encourage operations of the doctors.
The medical director, however, expressed optimism that the migration of health workers to other countries would eventually stop someday.
“One thing to note is that with time, this movement will become saturated and it will stop.
“I can recall that sometimes in the 1980s, a lot of people were migrating to Saudi Arabia in search of greener pastures; now most of them are back home; they are old and are retiring.
“So, the trending brain drain will certainly stop someday. The Nigerian personnel who left the country will return home either as a result of age, retirement or one issue or the other,” he said.
