The Chief Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre, Abuja, Prof Saad Ahmed, has said brain drain in the health sector was affecting doctors smooth services to the public.
Ahmed further said the hospital has particularly lost huge number of staff to brain drain, in the last one year, regretted that the development was breaking its services.
In view of this, Ahmed appealed to authorities to give hospital leaders the leverage to replace staff that leave for greener pastures so as to stop service distortions to the public.
The appeal came as he also said the hospital had recently acquired some state-of-the-art equipment to begin heart and lung surgeries among others.
He commended the federal government for the various steps it has taken to address issues leading to industrial actions in the health sector.
“The issue of brain drain is of serious concerns, which as the committee of CMDs, we were able to raise. I can tell you that the government has already set up a committee at the moment on Health Sector Reform to look at the health sector, to see areas where they need to reform in order to stop restiveness and also the brain drain that we currently have. At the moment, that committee is calling for memoranda from members of the public and other stakeholders in order to help it in its assignment.
“Brain drain is one of the serious challenges that we Federal Medical Centre, Abuja, are equally facing because I know the number of doctors, nurses, pharmacists that left this place within the last one year.
“Quite a number and I think it’s part of the things the reform committee is going to look at because we leaders of the health sector, should be given some leverages to replace those that are leaving in order not to break services. For example, let’s say you have one orthopaedic surgeon in your facility and all of a sudden, that person is leaving for the UK, the US or wherever, and you have to start going through all processes of waivers here and there before you replace, meanwhile, there are patients that are there waiting.”
Ahmed said, recruitments were carried out by his administration to complement staff in the hospital.
“Health care workers burn out, let me put it that way and with all the brain drains we have, the numbers keep depleting. We do have psycho-social support for staff, but beyond that, we are equally looking at how to increase the number of staffs so that everybody can have adequate time to take care of some other needs and all of that.
“Recently, we were able to recruit quite a number of staff and I believe that will reduce the pressure on the staff but it’s still not enough and since its a continued thing, you will continue to see how we can improve on the number in order to reach an optimal level,” he said.
Speaking also on medical tourism, Prof. Saad said his hospital has modern equipment at the moment to treat health issues that were making Nigerians seek help outside the country.
“For medical tourism, we are trying to address that. For example, open heart surgery- we can do it here now,” he said.
“Within the next one week, we are starting laser surgeries. We are now doing arthroscopy, laminectomy and all of that. For those that want to do a general medical check-up, we have virtually all the equipment on the ground now.
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“Now, in terms of equipment, we were able to bring in lots of equipment. For example, we have the heart-lung machine and all its accessories as I am talking to you now.
“Within the next one week, we are going to start open heart surgery in this place. We equally have a laser machine just for laser surgeries. This is something that is state-of-the-art and virtually every surgeon in this country wants to come and have a feel.
“Apart from that, we have equipment for arthroscopy this is for knee surgeries and laminectomy for spine surgeries. We have equipped our radiology department with state-of-the-art digital X-ray which comes along with fluoroscopy. It is also, usually they come separately but we were able to get that and currently, it has been installed and it will be put to use.” he said.
He further acknowledged that other federal medical centres equally have the equipment for such treatment of such issues as he pointed out that there is a need to make the public know that these services are available and also see how the hospital can minimise some of the challenges patients face when they come.”
He Noted that attitudinal actions on the part of the health care workers were contributing to low patronage of the services in most hospitals,
“All health administrators can work on the attitude of the staff in order to gain some confidence of the members of the community to access those services.”
“The investment the federal government made in the health sector, within the last two years is quite enormous and every health facility should be able to showcase what they have and what they can do.”
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