Nigerian health authorities are concerned about the exodus of health staff to overseas countries. Better pay and medical facilities have been cited as the main reason for the flight of Nigerian doctors, nurses, and paramedical staff.
Only recently the Nigerian health minister, Professor Alphonsus Nwosu, promised to do something. "We shall definitely address the problem of doctors and nurses leaving in droves to take up jobs in Europe and North America," he said.
Mrs Stella Ekpendu, the principal of the School of Nursing of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, said, however, that there was nothing that the government could do to stem the flight to developed countries unless it was prepared to invest massively in the health sector. "The exodus of nurses, for example, from Nigeria to abroad, will not stop until the government addresses the issue of poor salary and the decay in the Nigerian health sector," she said.
The favourite destinations of migrating Nigerian medical staff are Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
It has been observed that foreign embassies in Nigeria, particularly those of Britain, the United States, and Saudi Arabia, receive on a weekly basis 20 to 25 verification requests from Nigerian nurses wishing to migrate abroad. This translates into about 1196 applications a year.
Given the poor pay at home, this is hardly surprising. An average nurse in Britain earns £15 000 ($22 900; €23 400) a year, whereas the best paid nurses in Nigeria earn about 300 000 naira (£1700; $2500; €2600) a year, though most earn between 60 000 and 120 000 naira.
Nigeria is not the only African country losing its medical staff to developed countries. Virtually every African country is affected. Statistics from Britain's Nursing and Midwifery Council showed that between in the 12 months up to March 2002, over 2000 African nurses left their countries to take up jobs in Britain.
South Africa lost 2114 nurses and midwives to Britain, and Zimbabwe lost 473 nurses. Other African countries losing nurses to Britain include Nigeria, which lost 432 nurses to Britain (up from 347 in 2000-1), Ghana (195, up from 140), Zambia (183, up from 88), and Kenya (155, up from 50).
As nursing vacancies in developed countries continue to be advertised in Nigerian newspapers and in the media of other African countries, the continent seemed set to lose more of its medical staff to more developed countries.
But as Dejene Aredo, an economist at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia observed, African medical staff are not the only professionals affected by the migration from the continent to developed countries. He said that as many as 20 000 professionals a year leave Africa to work in developed countries. He estimated the economic cost at about $4bn a year because its highly skilled workers are moving abroad for jobs. The brain drain is stalling the continent's development, said Mr Aredo. He added: "It is a problem because there is a huge deficit of manpower in developing countries."