No fewer than 14,815 Nigerian-trained nurses and midwives have been licensed to practise in the United Kingdom from 2017 to September 2024, The PUNCH reports.
This is according to the latest report on the number of Nigerian nursing and midwifery professionals on the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council, obtained exclusively by our correspondent.
As of March 31, 2024, there were 13,656 Nigerian nurses and midwives in the UK, but from April 1 to September 30, 2024, the number increased to 14,815.
This means that 1,159 nurses and midwives educated in Nigeria moved to the UK in six months to seek greener pastures.
Going by this figure, the number of Nigerian nurses and midwives who moved to the UK increased by 8.5 per cent in six months.
The data showed that the NMC register has been growing steadily since 2017, and the past six months have continued the upward trend.
It clarified that the registration data highlights the number of professionals eligible to practise but does not specify how many people are currently practising.
It said that as of September 30, there were 841,367 professionals on the register. That’s 14,949 (1.8 percent) more than six months ago, and 151,629 (22 per cent) more than in March 2017, when the steady growth began.
“For the first time, there are more than 200,000 international professionals on the register (200,362). This is 10,145 (5.3 percent) more than there were in March,” the report stated.
The largest international cohort on the register is those who were educated in India: 67,576. That means professionals from India now account for eight percent of the total available UK nursing and midwifery workforce.
There are also now more than 50,000 people on our register (50,180) who were educated in the Philippines.
“We continue to see people joining the register from ‘red list’ countries. However, our data show a decrease in joiners who were educated in the red list countries Nigeria (-16.1 percent) and Ghana (-3.5 percent) compared to the same period last year. At the same time, recruitment of Nepal-educated professionals has more than doubled in the past six months – compared to the same period in September 2023.”
It, however, said the top non-UK countries of education as of September 2024 are India (67,576); Philippines (50,180); Nigeria (14,815); Romania (7,357); and Ghana (6,362).
The council mentioned that the proportion of all registered professionals from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds has continued to rise, and these professionals now account for almost a third (31.7 percent) of everyone on the register – an increase of more than a percentage point in six months.
“There are two main reasons for the increasing ethnic diversity of the register. One is that UK-educated nursing and midwifery graduates are more ethnically diverse than they used to be. The other is the big rise in professionals joining our register from Asian and African countries,” it added.
Speaking at the annual capacity building workshop of the Association of Medical Councils of Africa in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister of State for Health, Dr Iziaq Salako, noted that health workforce migration remains a significant concern for Nigeria and many African nations.
“We train some of the world’s finest doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals, yet too often, they leave our shores in search of better opportunities. While we celebrate their global impact, we must also confront the strain this places on our health systems and our economy,” he said.
He said there was a need to share strategies such as incentives for retention, regional collaboration, and harmonised training standards to increase the output from the medical schools while maintaining high quality that can ensure our workforce remains committed to serving our communities.
He called on Africans to work together to institute legally binding agreements that will ensure that destination countries contribute better to the health infrastructural and manpower development of African countries that continue to expend huge national resources to train health workers that are keeping the health systems of America, Europe and Asia running.
He added that health workforce migration should become health workforce exporting.
