They said these, among others, would help to check the worsening crisis of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals fleeing with their skills abroad. 

Oloriegbe and HFN President Dr. Pamela Ajayi, among others, spoke in Lagos at the federation’s two-day meeting with the lawmaker at the weekend.

Tagged: Breakfast Meeting on Forging a New Paradigm, the meeting was aimed at forging a new paradigm with the private health sector and address critical issues affecting the sector through collaboration with lawmakers, to ensure a beneficial consensus for the sector nationwide.

Responding to a question from The Nation, both speakers described brain drain in the sector as a crisis.

Ajayi said: “We didn’t have enough doctors and nurses in the first place and to lose them at the rate at which we are, it’s a crisis. It’s part of the issues that were brought up and we spoke extensively about some of the solutions that could be proffered to reverse brain drain among, which include private sector incentives, certain issues to do with training and development.”

Oloriegbe added that situation was not only critical but was also a “complex problem in terms of addressing” because it involved systemic issues of demand and supply, human rights, the civil service system, among others.

He said: “For every worker in the public sector, there are criteria that determine what they earn and you cannot say because doctors or nurses are going, I’ll give them a special classification. They already have a special class of salaries, but if you say you want parity with what is paid to them outside, then other civil servants, others within the sector will also raise issues. This is one of the challenges that we have.”

Source: thenation