UNN Don Seeks Solution to Medical Tourism, Brain Drain 

A neurosurgeon at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Enoch Ogbonnaya Uche, says medical tourism and brain drain can stop in Nigeria if the government begins to equip hospitals with the necessary facilities to enhance the performance of medical doctors and other healthcare workers.

He also suggested that a durable welfare scheme for medical personnel should be in place to quench their appetite for travelling overseas for greener pastures.

He said this while delivering the 198 inaugural university lecture at the Enugu campus, titled ‘Brain Surgery in the Global Age, Navigating the Barriers of Care to Habituate Survival in the Final Frontiers, Footmarks of a Neurosurgeon’.

According to the scholar, the competence of Nigerian doctors globally is not in doubt, stressing that their challenge in Nigeria had been a lack of equipment to perform their duty and almost zero motivation.

Uche, however, commended the management of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu, for putting in place state-of-the-art equipment in the neurosurgery theatre, which had made surgery at the hospital a routine.

He revealed that recently, a patient who had concluded arrangements to travel abroad for a neurosurgery case had to cancel his plans to come to the UNTH to hear the wonders performed by neurosurgeons there.

The Abia state-born surgeon advised Nigerians who have had headaches for about a month to seek medical attention because prolonged headaches are one of the symptoms of brain tumours. He re-emphasised the need to spread the national health insurance scheme to give more Nigerians access to healthcare.

He lauded the role of renowned neurosurgeons like Prof. Latunde Odeku, who pioneered the foundation of neurosurgery in Nigeria and Africa at the University College Hospital Ibadan in 1962.

Prof. Adelola Adeloye joined him in 1967, and in 1968, a second neurosurgery unit was established at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital by Dr. Da Silva and Dr. Nosiru Ojikutu, as well as that of UNTH, established in 1974 by Prof. Sam Ohaegbulam.

Uche joined UNN in 2009 as lecturer I and rose rapidly to the highest academic status of professor in 2019.

In his remarks, the UNN Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Charles Igwe, reaffirmed the commitment of the institution to invest in research and described the inaugural lecture series founded in 1976 as a harvest of intellectual prowess, adding that the lecture had stimulated research among academic staff of the university.