Bill proposing 5-year service for doctors ill conceived

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A public health consultant and Senior Lecturer at the University of Lagos, Dr. Alero Roberts has described the bill seeking to make it mandatory for fresh medical graduates to provide services to Nigeria for up to five years before receiving full registration and license to practice as ill-conceived and discriminatory.

The proposed legislation tilted, “bill for an Act to Amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act, Cap. M379, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, to mandate any Nigeria trained Medical or Dental Practitioner to Practice in Nigeria for a minimum of five before being granted a full licence by the council in order to make quality health services available to Nigeria,” was sponsored by Hon. Ganiyu Johnson.

According to Johnson, the proposed legislation seeks to cure the exodus of brain drain and build the manpower in the medical sector.

He opined that Nigeria-trained medical or dental practitioners must work in the country for a minimum of five years before they are granted full licenses.

However, during an interview on Arise TV’s Morning Show, Dr. Roberts picked holes in the bill, advising the government to rather tackle the issue that is making doctors leave the country.

According to her, the bill was, “misdirected, ill-informed and poorly thought through.”

“Just like medical doctors, it can’t be in the interest of the health sector of the country, and it cannot be in the interest of the collective public good. I mean, it’s such an ill thought out bill, even arising from a faulty motion in the first place.

“And what I want to ask is that one of the reasons for the stipulations for the bill was that oh doctors, graduates from public universities that are subsidized by governments.

“Why are you discriminating against the MBBS graduates? Number two, what statistics really inform this bill? I mean, where did you get that figure of 10,000 Doctors operating in the country?

“Do you know how many doctors MBBS graduates the country produces annually, and the proportion of them that actually entered the residency program? Do you know how much it costs the average resident to go through the residency program in Nigeria presently, at this moment? So these are questions I really would like the Hon. Johnson to answer and then some of the things I want to know is, why aren’t we fixing these remuneration packages or recruitment processes?