On October 25, 2019, the Minister of Health of Nigeria announced its recent effort to improve health care in Nigeria. The federal Health Ministry will begin consulting with foreign governments to discuss how to lure 1,000 “expert” foreign doctors to practice in Nigeria, a country with 200-million population.
Nigerian news media were incredulous. The well-documented problem with Nigerian health care is the widespread lack of internationally acceptable medical facilities and equipment for secondary and tertiary hospital care. It is true that a handful of private hospitals in major cities like Abuja and Lagos are able to provide healthcare in certain specialties. The costs for those procedures are expensive, well beyond the economic means of the average Nigerian worker, and totally out of reach for the poor, and even tougher yet for the rural poor.
Following the Health Ministry’s announcement, long-time social media observer of Nigeria, Adeola, observed that while Nigerian doctors and nurses receive excellent medical educations in Nigeria, these very capable doctors and nurses emigrate as soon as they can, preferring to work with superior facilities, equipment, and research support in countries outside Nigeria.
In this excerpt from her “Keeping It Real” vlog, Adeola listed some examples of exceptional achievements by Nigerian physicians, when they have proper medical facilities, equipment, and collateral resources.
The article about the plan to import doctors can be found, for example, in
The Guardian.ng
Adeola’s comments are part of her November 1, 2019 blog: