Evercare Aim To Return Nigerian Diaspora Doctors
Nigerian doctors working in diaspora and expats in key areas are being targeted by Evercare Hospital.
The hospital says it’s doing this to counteract the effect of migration, which has seen many medical experts migrate overseas to compete with other health experts.
Evercare is a 165-bed multispecialty tertiary care hospital that offers services across core medical and surgical subspecialties.
The hospital poaches healthcare workers from Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, among other leading destinations for Nigerian-trained healthcare workers. According to Rajeev Bhandari, chief executive officer of Evercare Hospital Lekki, 90 percent of the hospital’s clinical staff is Nigerian.
Having launched operations in Nigeria a year ago, the CEO said the company has worked to build a system that creates locally the quality of opportunity that health experts seek abroad.
Due to its scale of operation, about 10 percent of its workforce comprises expatriates who are dedicated to staff up-skilling, while it also has partnership plans with foreign bodies on various training exercises.
“We have managed to get back some doctors working outside the country such as in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere,” Bhandari said speaking at an event marking the hospital’s first year anniversary in Victoria Island.
“The opportunity that we want to create is for people to come back and work in their country.”
As a result of the massive exodus of medical talents, including doctors and nurses, healthcare providers in the country are facing increasingly difficult choices: rethinking their staffing strategy or carrying out operations below optimal standards.
According to World Health Organisation, Nigeria has a doctor to patient ratio of one per 5, 000 patients, with nurses to patients at 16 per 10, 000.
Temi Awogboro, the executive director explained the hospital aims to create a pipeline of new talents and provide incentives to bring home many experienced Nigerians who are in the diaspora.
It recently signed an agreement with a group of Nigerian diaspora doctors in the UK and part of the objectives is for them to return to train and also retain their skills at home.
The firm is thinking of partnering with medical schools and nursing schools in order to develop talent here and to increase the pool of potential recruits.
“We came into the market with the ambition to convert what has been historically a brain drain into a brain gain. And we felt with a combination of the infrastructure, the equipment and best-in-class focused on quality outcomes that we could start to re-divert some of the doctors that have left Nigeria back to Nigeria and we are increasingly seeing that,” the executive director said.
“With the right steps and alignment, we can make positive steps towards transforming and bringing innovation into the sector. For us, our goal is to ensure sustainability and continue to scale and impact lives.”
Akin Abayomi, health commissioner for Lagos State, calling for increased private sector participation said improving the health care sector requires the joint effort of both parties, with the government setting the standards, regulating activities, and the private sector making more focused contributions.
“What we are doing is setting the benchmark. So we are building specialist facilities in psychiatry, infectious diseases, oncology, mother-child care, and cardio-renal centres. Once we set up the standard, we expect that the private sector will go and fill the gap.”
The government has also done a feasibility study that shows that the city requires 10 times as many hospitals with the kind of infrastructure and capacity that Evercare boasts, reducing brain drain over the long term.