Nigeria’s health sector is facing one of its worst workforce crises in decades as a staggering 4,193 doctors and dentists left the country in 2024 alone, according to a new report released by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
The Nigeria Health Statistics Report on Friday, paints a troubling picture of a system losing skilled professionals at an alarming rate.
Between 2023 and 2024, the migration of health workers across all cadres surged by a shocking 200 per cent.
The document reveals that a total of 43,221 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and medical laboratory scientists relocated abroad within the two-year period, further deepening the already critical brain drain in Nigeria’s fragile healthcare system.
Despite modest growth in the number of trained professionals between 2022 and 2024, the report notes that only about half of registered health workers are currently licensed to practise — a regulatory gap that limits capacity even before accounting for migration losses.
“Attrition, especially through external migration, remains a significant challenge. External migration surged by 200 per cent across all cadres between 2023 and 2024. In 2024 alone, a total of 4,193 doctors and dentists left Nigeria, with approximately 66 per cent migrating to the United Kingdom. Nurses and midwives are the most affected groups.”
Between 2023 and 2024, the United Kingdom took the lead among preferred destinations for Nigerian doctors and dentists, receiving 4,627 practitioners.
Other top destinations included Canada (934), the United States (561), Australia (188), the UAE (140), Ireland (113), the Maldives (77), Botswana (67), India (57) and Saudi Arabia (43).
Nurses and midwives are leaving even faster. As of 2024, more than 23,000 had migrated, driven by better pay, improved working conditions and opportunities for career growth abroad.
Pharmacists and medical laboratory scientists are also exiting in large numbers. Canada, the UK and Australia led as destinations for pharmacists, while medical laboratory scientists migrated mostly to Canada (6,393), the UAE (2,010), Ireland (1,500), the U.S. (1,052) and the UK (410).
This exodus has left many hospitals and clinics severely understaffed, stretching the remaining workforce thin and undermining patient care, especially in underserved rural communities.
Although the Federal Government says it has recruited more than 37,000 healthcare workers since 2023 — over 75 per cent of them in clinical roles — Nigeria’s yawning workforce gap continues to widen.
Speaking at the Joint Annual Report meeting of the health sector in Abuja, the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Salako, acknowledged the grim reality.
“Our doctor-to-population ratio is 1:5,000 (against the WHO recommendation of 1:600), while the nurse-to-population ratio is as low as 1:2,000 (against the WHO recommendation of 1:300). This is further compounded by inequities in the distribution of health workers, where 75 per cent are concentrated in urban areas, serving 45 per cent of the population,” Salako said.
He noted that the problem is worsened by urban–rural inequality, with 75 per cent of health workers concentrated in cities serving less than half of Nigeria’s population.
Despite the challenges, Salako insisted that the Federal Government remains committed to reversing the trend.
He said the administration is expanding training quotas, strengthening primary healthcare, updating the Health Workforce Registry and implementing a migration policy aimed at improving retention.
“Though migration continues to adversely affect retention, a health workforce migration policy has been developed to achieve better retention and foster more collaborative contributions from Nigerian health professionals in the diaspora” he added.
