No fewer than 100 psychiatric doctors left the country to practice abroad in the last one year, Prof. Taiwo Obindo, the President of Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN), said on Thursday.
Obindo spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos while examining the rate of brain drain in psychiatric profession in Nigeria in 2023.
He decried that the psychiatric profession was the worst hit by the trending brain drain syndrome ongoing in the Nigerian medical sector.
He said that brain drain was affecting the psychiatric practice/profession more than other professions in terms of the psychiatric nurses, psychiatric doctors including all other caregivers and health workers in the field.
According to him, for every five psychiatric doctors trained in Nigeria, three out of them leave the country to practise abroad.
Obindo lamented that the country had the requisites to train medical personnel, but lacked the ability to maintain, retain, and sustain them.
The professor noted that having a psychiatric qualification, experience or certificate was a visa on its own because medical institutions abroad were looking for such personnel and were ready to offer them good/enticing remuneration.
“Many practitioners in the psychiatric field have left the country to practise abroad; though the exact figure may not be there.
“But, I can categorically state that more than 100 trained psychiatric doctors have left to practise abroad in the last one year.
“In fact, for every five psychiatric doctors trained in Nigeria, three out of them leave the country to practise abroad.
“As I am talking to you now, one psychiatric practitioner somewhere is leaving or planning to leave the country to practise abroad, and it is as rampant and bad as that,” he told NAN.
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