Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), has said that Nigeria loses a whopping 70 percent of the 4,000 doctors produced annually in the country due to brain drain.
Dr Victor Makanjuola, President of the association, disclosed this yesterday at the MNCAN Medical Education summit, titled Stopping/Reducing Brain Drain, in Abuja.
Makanjuola said, “From the data presented this morning, we probably retain just about 30 percent of those retrained on an annual basis and we are retaining about 30 percent of about 4,000 produced annually.”
Makanjuola said the country is already in crisis, it will go into deeper crisis unless there is a mechanism of increasing the 4,000 annual production to 8,000 annual production and then to 12,000.
He said, “If we retain 30 percent of 12,000, it’s better than 30 percent of 4,000 and if we train about 12,000, 30 percent of that is far better than the current state of about 4,000 and with that, we think we can still support the system, not optimally but at least keep the system going.”
Makanjuola also said that increasing medical schools only will not save the situation but the federal government must be commended for responding to that need that has been identified that we are not producing enough, saying in respect to that, new medical schools which are set up will require new lecturers, except they are going to take from the existing ones, then depleting those ones and then the quality reduces.
