There are growing concerns about the rising burden of unemployment among medical doctors in the country.
This is at a time when many federal and state government hospitals are struggling to attend to the health challenges of millions of Nigerians with few medical doctors and other specialists.
Daily Trust Saturday investigations reveal that ironically, some state governments spend millions of naira sponsor their indigenes in Nigeria and abroad to study medicine but do not employ them after their studies.
Others who are trained in the country by their parents also find it difficult to secure employment in both federal and state governments’ health institutions.
Scary figures
Findings by Daily Trust Saturday revealed that the failure of relevant authorities to recruit qualified doctors has led to some of them doing part time employments in several private hospitals to make ends meet.
This is in spite of the inadequate number of doctors in public primary, secondary and tertiary levels of health care, as well as the fact that the country is losing a large number of doctors daily to brain drain.
According to the President of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr Ojinmah Uche, Nigeria has about 24,000 actively licensed physicians giving a doctor-patient ratio of approximately 1:10,000.
