Japa may mean a better life for the person leaving, but when doctors are among those leaving, the decision has consequences that go beyond the individual. It affects the hospitals, healthcare workers and patients left behind.
A doctor leaving Nigeria is not just another professional moving abroad for a better opportunity. It can also mean one less person available to treat patients in a country that already has far fewer doctors than it needs.
According to the World Health Organisation, Nigeria had about 3.86 doctors for every 10,000 people in 2022. Now, the country is also dealing with the continued migration of trained medical professionals.
In April 2026, reports citing data from the UK General Medical Council said 4,691 Nigerian-trained doctors had relocated to the UK since May 2023, taking the estimated number of Nigeria-trained doctors practising in the UK to about 15,692.
Why are doctors looking abroad?
For many doctors, the decision is not simply about wanting to live abroad. It is about wanting to work in an environment where their training, time and expertise are better supported.
Low pay, long working hours, limited equipment, difficult working conditions, insecurity and concerns about career progression have all been identified as factors behind the migration of Nigerian health workers. Research on Nigerian doctors has also found strong interest in emigration, particularly among younger doctors and those looking for better professional opportunities.
A doctor can spend years in medical school, complete internship and residency training, work through exhausting shifts and still find themselves asking whether there is a better way to build a career.
For someone already exhausted from working in an overstretched system, the opportunity to earn more, access better facilities and have clearer career opportunities abroad can be difficult to ignore.
So, for many doctors, “japa” is not necessarily about abandoning Nigeria. Sometimes, it is about finding a system that allows them to practise medicine without constantly fighting the system around them.
The cost of losing doctors
A hospital does not suddenly receive fewer patients because some of its doctors have moved abroad. The patients remain, the illnesses remain, the emergencies still happen.
Instead, the doctors who stay may have to carry a larger workload, which can mean longer shifts, more patients to attend to and less time for each person who walks through the hospital doors.
And this is where the conversation moves from migration to wellness. Healthcare workers need healthcare too.
A system that repeatedly loses doctors can put additional pressure on the doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers who remain. Over time, that pressure can contribute to exhaustion and burnout.
For patients, the consequences can show up in ways that may not immediately look like “brain drain”. It can be a longer wait before seeing a doctor, travelling to another hospital because a specialist is unavailable, struggling to get an appointment, or a doctor trying to attend to several patients at once because there are simply not enough hands.
For someone who needs urgent or specialised care, these delays can matter.
The World Health Organisation has warned that poorly managed international migration of health workers can worsen shortages in countries that are already struggling with limited health workforces, weaken health systems and widen inequalities in access to care.
The pressure on those who remain
The doctors who stay. They are the ones who continue to work in busy hospitals, attend to patients, train younger colleagues and keep services running despite the pressure.
Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health has acknowledged that migration is affecting health-worker retention. The government has responded with measures including additional recruitment, improved allowances, residency funding and a National Health Workforce Migration Policy.
In 2024, the Federal Government said more than 20,000 health workers, including doctors, nurses and allied professionals, had been employed across 58 federal health institutions, while further recruitment was being pursued.
Those steps matter, but retaining doctors is about more than increasing the number of people on a payroll.
Doctors also need functioning hospitals, reliable equipment, opportunities for professional development, fair compensation, safe working environments and enough colleagues to share the workload, if a doctor spends years training only to enter a system that leaves them exhausted, under-resourced and struggling to see a future, another japa conversation is probably only a matter of time.
A healthcare system worth staying for
People are more likely to stay when staying makes sense. Nigeria has already recognised the problem strongly enough to create a National Health Workforce Migration Policy, developed with support from the WHO and the UK government.
There are also recent efforts to significantly expand the pipeline of doctors being trained. Since 2023, the Federal Government says admission quotas for medical doctors have increased by 38 per cent, while the number of medical schools has also grown. More recently, it said annual medical school admission quotas had been doubled from about 5,000 to 10,000. The government has also committed ₦110 billion through TETFund to upgrade 18 medical, dental, pharmacy and nursing training institutions, helping to expand the capacity to train more healthcare professionals.
The bigger challenge is turning these efforts into conditions that allow doctors to build good lives and good careers at home.
Because this is not only about losing doctors. It is about what happens to the health of a country when the people trained to protect it keep looking for somewhere else to practise.
For every doctor who leaves, there is a patient who will eventually need a doctor.
