MEDICAL BRAIN DRAIN AND ITS EFFECTS ON HEALTHCARE SERVICE DELIVERY IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF USMANU DANFODIYO UNIVERSITY TEACHING HOSPITAL

Abstract

Migration and emigration among health care professionals across nations and continents have been a societal issue globally for some decades. The situation is made worse in developing countries, where health care professional always migrates to developed countries in search of greener pastures. Constant migration of trained health care professionals erodes the health care facilities and delivery so much as leaving the health care of the citizen of the developing countries as Nigeria in jeopardy as getting adequate specialist care from trained health care personnel becomes a mirage. The increased movements of relatively well educated persons from developing countries to developed countries was termed “Brain drain” which was first coined by the British Royal Society to allude to the mass movement of technologist and scientist from Canada and United Kingdom in the 50s and 60s to the United States of America USA for better opportunities. Migration of professional health care givers to a more stable socio-political environment for improvement in their educational and professional status, better salaries and quality of life. However, a number of studies were undertaken in the area of brain drain in Nigeria and some other part of the world in order to find out the causes and solution to the problem of brain-drain in both public and private sector but none has been done in Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto. Therefore, it is against this backdrop that the researcher seeks to investigate some factors associated with medical Brain Drain and its effect on healthcare service delivery in Nigeria with particular reference to Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto.