Japa: Our hospitals will be empty in 2 years – CMDs

By Balarabe Alkassim Ojoma Akor

The Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) of University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) have raised the alarm that tertiary health hospitals are facing threats of becoming empty as doctors, nurses and other skilled health workers leave in droves due to poor remunerations.

They lamented that despite the federal government’s investment in health infrastructure, the trend has continued unabated and is affecting healthcare delivery in the country.

The CMD, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Professor Wasiu Adeyemo and the CMD, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Abiodun and others raised the alarm at the 2025 budget defence session before the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions.

LUTH CMD, Prof. Adeyemo, told the committee that the rate at which medical workers were leaving the country is alarming, hence the need to act fast to address the situation.

He said, “People resign, not even retirement almost every day. Yes. In the next one or two years, we are going to have all our hospitals empty. We need to do something about the remuneration of all the healthcare workers.

“Otherwise, government is putting a lot of money into infrastructure, and we are going to have empty hospitals. The major reason why people leave is for economic reasons. Consultants are earning less than $1,000”.

Giving details of the hospital’s 2024 budget performance, the CMD said they had a total budget of N19.2 billion out of which personnel has N13.57 billion allocation and a total overhead of N33.2 million.

He added, “In terms of performance and utilisation, total overhead was 100 per cent as of December. For the total personnel, 91 per cent performance, but for the capital project, 45 per cent. So, the outstanding is 55 per cent.  If November and December are released today, we would cover maybe about 85 per cent.”

Prof. Adeyemo, while responding to an observation by members of the committee on personnel performance, said the hospital had 95 per cent personnel performance because of payment of benefits and other activities due to resignation and retirements in the year.

The CMD added, “For the proposal for 2025, a total budget of N32.7 billion, out of which a total overhead which is better than that of last year.”

Similarly, the CMD, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Prof. Abiodun, lamented the delay in the release of budgeted funds to the hospital which, he said, adversely affected its operations.

Giving the details of UCH’s 2024 budget, he said it has a capital appropriation of N5,593,110,394  N5.5 billion)

“For 2025, we are proposing N4,387,763,661 for capital (N4.4 billion) This is a bit less than what we had in 2024. And that’s because of this envelope system; what we’re given, we have to work with it.

“The overhead, we have N690,006,464 (N690 million). There’s a bit of increase over that of 2024 because of the outrageous bills we are getting from the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company.”

In his remarks earlier, the Chairman, House Committee on Health Institutions, Patrick Umoh, charged the CMDs of University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) to be thorough in their presentations in order to provide a clear picture of their situations.

He said, “The reality is that you must extract the proposal made by Mr President as it affects your medical centre. It should be part of your budget, and your presentation. The report of the 2024 budget performance and 2025 budget proposal is given provisional approval for now.”

Umeh lamented the precarious situation facing tertiary health institutions in the country.

The chairman ruled that while the committee could not attend to all the health institutions on the same day, it would collect all their correspondences and submissions from the outstanding teaching hospitals to work on for further deliberations.

NMA reacts

Speaking on the issue, Dr Emeka Ayogu, Chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association, Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) chapter, agreed with the views of the chief medical directors and medical directors  of tertiary and secondary hospitals in the country.

He said Nigeria has lost a lot of doctors to other countries as many of them continue to leave for greener pastures.

He said the Japa syndrome is a serious matter, adding that doctors and other health workers were leaving because of the remuneration, economic hardship and poor working conditions.

He said, “The money they are paid is not sufficient to sustain them, so most of them leave, firstly, because of poor remuneration, then because of poor condition of service.  Doctors have not been favoured in the recent past. See what lawyers got recently, where their salary was increased by 300%.

“Recently, the military were also given some favours at their retirement; some of them even got bullet proof cars at retirement. We have doctors who are retiring as consultants and have served this country for 30 to 35 years, as the case may be and are so poor. It is a source of worry.

“So the CMDs are correct because something needs to be done in other to tackle the Japa syndrome.  We need to work on an environment that is favourable, with the requisite equipment and facilities.”

It would be recalled that the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Ali Pate, while appearing on a programme recently, said in the last five years, the country lost between 15,000 to 16,000 doctors to the Japa syndrome.

He said there were about  55, 000 licensed doctors in the country  attending to Nigerians following the mass exodus of health professionals to hospitals abroad.

He added that there were about 300,000 health professionals working in Nigeria and they comprise doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, laboratory scientists among others.

He said, “We did an assessment and discovered we have 85,000 to 90,000 registered Nigerian doctors. Not all of them are in the country. Some are in the Diaspora, especially in the United States of America and United Kingdom. But there are 55,000 licensed doctors in the country. The issue overall, in terms of health professionals, is that they are not enough. They are insufficient in terms of the skills mix. Can you believe that most of the high skilled professional doctors are in Lagos, Abuja and a few urban centres? There is a huge distribution issue.”