No fewer than 100 psychiatric doctors left the country to practise abroad in the last one year, Prof. Taiwo Obindo, the President of Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN), said on Thursday.
Obindo spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos while examining the rate of brain drain in psychiatric profession in Nigeria in 2023.
He decried that the psychiatric profession was the worst hit by the trending brain drain syndrome ongoing in the Nigeria medical sector.
He said that brain drain was affecting the psychiatric practice/profession more than other professions in terms of the psychiatric nurses, psychiatric doctors including all other caregivers and health workers in the field.
According to him, for every five psychiatric doctors trained in Nigeria, three out of them leave the country to practise abroad.
Obindo lamented that the country had the requisites to train medical personnels, but lacked the ability to maintain, retain and sustain them.
The professor noted that having a psychiatric qualification, experience or certificate was a visa on its own because medical institutions abroad were looking for such personnel and were ready to offer them good/enticing remuneration.
“Many practitioners in the psychiatric field have left the country to practise abroad; though the exact figure may not be there.
“But, I can categorically state that more than a 100 trained psychiatric doctors have left to practise abroad in the last one year.
“In fact, for every five psychiatric doctors trained in Nigeria, three out of them leave the country to practise abroad.
“As I am talking to you now, one psychiatric practitioner somewhere is leaving or planning to leave the country to practise abroad, and it is as rampant and bad as that,” he told NAN.
Also speaking, the Medical Director of Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Yaba, Dr Olugbenga Owoeye, said the hospital focused on training and retraining of more psychiatric doctors to fill the vacuum created by brain drain syndrome in the hospital.
Owoeye, who decried the effects of brain drain in the hospital, said it had resulted to drastic reduction of manpower, particularly the psychiatric doctors and nurses.
According to him, to close the vacuum created by the constant migration of the psychiatric practitioners to overseas, 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 different states of the country and abroad.
“Brain drain is affecting the psychiatric practice/profession more than other professions in terms of the psychiatric doctors including all others caregivers and health workers in the field.
“To this end, we have resolved to be training more doctors in order to fill the gaps and vacuum 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 equipping it with the required and modern facilities as well as the training programmes as some of the things being done by the hospital to encourage health workers.
He listed the renovation of the drug rehabilitation center, provision of the intensive care units and establishment of a new functional stand-alone molecular laboratory as efforts to aid/encourage operations of the doctors
He, however, expressed optimism that the migration of health worker to other countries to practise 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 80s, 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 also the trending brain drain; it 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.(NAN)
