In a bid to improve the dwindling healthcare system in Nigeria, it has been made known that the federal government of Nigeria has plans put in place to sponsor some selected medical personnel abroad for foreign training in some specific medical fields. This program will be a collaboration between the ministry of health and the National Postgraduate Medical College.
This was made known by the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa, during the induction of Dr Peter Ebeigbe as the 23rd President of the National Postgraduate Medical College, Ijanikin in Lagos.
Speaking about the initiative during the ceremony, Dr Tunji Alausa, said, “I am to announce that the college, in collaboration with the ministry, is establishing training in many other sub-specialties to be able to treat Nigerians, reduce medical tourism, and enhance research.
“The new curriculum being developed includes interventional cardiology in the faculty of internal medicine and cardiac electrophysiology in the faculty of internal medicine. This is extremely important as a lot of people in our country now have pacemakers and automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillators; interventional radiology in the faculty of radiology; pain medicine in the faculty of anaesthesia; critical care medicine in the faculty of anaesthesia; hospice and palliative medicine in the faculty of family medicine; and robotic surgery in the faculty of surgery.
“The FMOH is putting mechanisms in place to fund this training abroad for selected candidates who will be bonded. Surgical oncology in the faculty of surgery; and transplant surgery in the faculty of surgery. This super specialty training in solid organ transplant will focus on kidney, liver, lung, and heart transplants for now.”
While giving a speech during his induction ceremony, Dr Peter Ebeigbe, who is a member of the Faculty of Obstetrics and Gynecology National Postgraduate Medical College, Ijanikin, Lagos State, bemoaned about the state of the economy and how it is affecting those in the medical profession, he said, “One of my teachers who travelled to the Middle East and came back after many years explained things to me, stating that a Nigerian medical professor’s annual earnings gradually dwindled until they were less than the equivalent of $700.
“It was an insightful ‘economic’ intervention by the Federal Government for the enactment of the Medical Salary Scale, which resulted in better pay for doctors, that put an end to the medical brain drain.
