In a decisive move to address the growing concerns over the migration of health professionals, the Nigerian government recently approved a comprehensive “National Health Workforce Migration Policy”. 

The strategic policy, designed to curb health worker migration, carries significant weight. Its potential to mitigate the issue and bring about a substantial transformation in Nigeria’s healthcare system cannot be overstated.

The document was a result of a robust and inclusive collaborative effort, spearheaded by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (FMOH) in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and funded by the United Kingdom government’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). This underscores the shared responsibility in addressing health worker migration and the inclusivity of all stakeholders in the process. 

Introducing a Strategic Approach to Health Workforce Migration
Health worker migration has been a persistent and significant challenge for Nigeria’s healthcare sector. The increasing number of skilled professionals seeking opportunities abroad has led to Nigeria being one of the 55 countries with a severe shortage of health workers on the WHO Health Workforce Support and Safeguard List 2023. 

This trend compromises the delivery of quality healthcare services and threatens the nation’s ability to achieve health-related SDGs. 

The policy’s development involved many stakeholders in Nigeria’s health sector and the diaspora. It aligns with the new National health sector renewal initiative using a sector-wide approach (SWAP) with a focus on several key areas, including improving healthcare worker retention rates, promoting ethical recruitment practices, enhancing data collection for better workforce planning, and investing in healthcare worker education and capacity building. 

By addressing these critical issues, the policy seeks to ensure that Nigeria can meet its health workforce needs while contributing to the global health landscape. 

To address the effects of Nigeria’s health worker shortage, the FMOH has implemented critical policy interventions. These include increasing the training quota of health training institutions to boost the production of health workers and providing in-service training for 120,000 health workers to enhance the quality of care at PHCs. 

This will expand the capacity of available health workers to deal with the current health needs of the people and improve the motivation of these health workers; policies like the National Human Resource for Health (HRH) policy, task shifting and sharing policy and other guidelines to ensure optimal use of available Human resources for health. WHO supports the government’s efforts in strengthening evidence generation through the national health workforce registry, national health workforce account and health workforce profile for improved decision-making. 

A Path Forward
In a prior interview, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammed Pate, noted, “This policy represents our dedication to building a resilient health system that can meet the needs of our people. 

“This policy is more than just a response to the ongoing exodus of healthcare professionals; it’s a comprehensive strategy to manage, harness, and reverse health worker migration. It envisions a thriving workforce that is well-supported, adequately rewarded, and optimally utilised to meet the healthcare needs of all Nigerians” The Minister calls on “recipient countries to implement a one-for-one (1:1) match—training one worker to replace every publicly trained Nigerian worker they receive”.

Speaking on the importance of the new policy, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, WHO Representative in Nigeria, applauded the government for embarking on the laudable policy intervention to manage the uncoordinated migration of health workers.

 “The approval of this policy is a significant step towards achieving the health-related SDGs in Nigeria. By addressing the root causes of health worker migration and promoting sustainable workforce planning, Nigeria aims to deliver better health outcomes for its population. WHO is proud to have supported this initiative, which will benefit Nigeria and contribute to global health equity.”

Achieving the SDGs: A Collaborative Effort
Through funding from the UK Government, WHO supported evidence generation for policy making and implementation in Nigeria. 

Furthermore, the UK government, through FCDO, will support at least 12 health training institutions across six states with equipment to provide quality training for the increased number of students in Health training institutions in Nigeria.

 WHO has also mobilized the three levels of the organization to provide technical support to the government of Nigeria in implementing its health sector strategic blueprint, including issues on HRH. 

The WHO Health Workforce Support and Safeguard List encourages countries to enter bilateral agreements informed by Health Labour Market Analysis (HLMA). WHO is providing technical support to Nigeria to conduct HLMA and develop an implementation plan for the new policy and guidelines for bilateral agreements with destination countries of these health workers. In recent years, WHO has strengthened platforms for coordinating HRH interventions in Nigeria at the national and sub-national levels. WHO will continue to support evidence-generation, capacity building and policy interventions to enhance the capacity of the Nigerian health workforce to achieve universal health coverage. 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO) – Nigeria.