The Making of a (Nigerian) Medical Doctor with Dr. Roli Iwere

Brain Drain & Other Stories

Not to downgrade Nigeria or anything, but it really took me a great deal to leave Nigeria and that’s why I kept on kind of dilly-dallying around. Okay. Went to the UK, came back, stayed in Nigeria for a while because I really didn’t want to leave Nigeria. I loved my life in Nigeria, but I just felt like my life as a doctor in Nigeria, I was never gonna get to the peak of what I wanted. And if I had the opportunity, then I was going to take the opportunity. I was working in First Cardiology and we would get patients from the LUTH, Idi-Araba? How can a tertiary institution be referring patients to a private institution? — Dr. Roli Iwere

In their 2010 peer-reviewed article, Misau, Al-Sadat, & Gerei defined migration of health workers or “brain drain” as the movement of health personnel in search of a better standard of living and life quality, higher salaries, access to advanced technology, and more stable political conditions in different places worldwide.

Brain drain may be within countries (internal brain drain), but in most cases refers to cross-border or international migration and often from the developing countries to the developed ones.

International migration of highly skilled professionals first emerged as a significant public health issue in the 1940s, when many European health professionals emigrated to the United Kingdom and the United States. By the mid-60s, the losses were…