UK halts active recruitment of health workers from Nigeria
The United Kingdom will halt the recruitment of health workers from Nigeria, placing the country on the red list of countries not to be targeted for recruitment by health and social care employers unless there is an agreement between governments, the government has announced.
The move comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) identified Nigeria as one of 55 countries with significant health workforce challenges, in a report released a month ago.
By the updated WHO’s workforce safeguard list, Nigeria and the likes of Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and 47 others – mostly African countries – are now in the no recruitment list. Consequently, the UK government has advised health and social care employers not to actively seek workers from these countries except where there is a government-to-government agreement. The code of practice for the international recruitment of health and social care personnel in England, recently updated, has Nigeria returned to the red list countries, which means, “no active recruitment is permitted”, the government said.
Meanwhile, a bill seeking to mandate Nigerian-trained medical and dental practitioners to practice for a minimum of five years in the country, before being granted a full license, recently passed second reading at the House of Representatives. There has been concern in recent months over the relocation of many healthcare workers in Nigeria to foreign countries — a development that has retrograded the state of the country’s health sector.
In August 2022, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) said a total collapse of the health sector was imminent, if urgent steps were not taken to address the brain drain in the sector. But Vice Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, told journalists that the Federal Government should create the enabling environment to motivate Nigerian-trained doctors, nurses and other health workers emigrating the country to work in Europe and other parts of the world to reconsider their choices.
