This is my OPINION, you are free to disagree decently.
A friend wrote on Kogi’s medical doctors recruitment and a walk through the comments reminded me of this conclusion i came to a while back.
Studying medicine is the desire of many but only a few get to graduate.
Others go into pharmacy, physiotherapy, Dental Surgery, Medical lab Tech and others.
Nursing is in a class of it’s own.
Now, I’ve observed that all these courses are studied in Nigeria.
We complain about the cost of tertiary education in Nigeria but whatever we pay here particularly for these above-named courses even at the private universities, is at best a fraction of what is paid in other countries.
US, UK, Canada, South Africa or even Ghana and Benin Republic have world class training facilities but it comes at great cost to the trainee, family and credit system.
I recall reading a while back that students loan form a huge chunk of the loan burden of the US.
My niece studying medicine at Stanford. Despite the huge scholarship she still had to access the loan because of the huge cost of the study.
The UK is almost a no-go area except for scholarships.
My senior friend’s daughter is on a Commonwealth scholarship for PG medical study in UK. The details of the scholarship made my head spin.
This countries get people to go through rigorous study at a great cost then employ the graduates at humongous emolument!
My conclusion is that as long as we have subsidised medical training in this country, we’re never likely going to have commensurate emolument for our medical personnel!
Yemi Taiwo-Alabi writes from Ibadan.
