The government of Kano State has pledged to offer automatic employment to the best graduates of Nafisatu College of Nursing Sciences, Kwankwaso village, Kano in order to strengthen the manpower gap in the state healthcare sector. Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf made this promise at the presentation of the certificate of practice to 36 successful graduates of the private nursing college, who were recently certified as registered nurses by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN).
Yusuf disclosed that the imperative of the job offer was intended to enable efficient healthcare services, in accordance with the blueprint of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) on access to quality healthcare delivery in Kano. The governor, who was represented by his deputy, Comrade Aminu Abdulsalam Gwarzo, applauded the exemplary performance of the fresh nurses in their professional examination. He also reminded them that being a qualified nurse is a responsibility to render service to humanity.
College proprietor urged the nurses to be good ambassadors.
Equally, the governor commended the vision of the founder of Nafisatu Nursing College, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who piloted the first private nursing college in Kano. He was optimistic that the college would produce the desired manpower that will fill the acute shortage of health workers in the region. He felicitated the graduates and their parents for enduring the needs of the study, and reiterated the commitment of the present administration to accord the desired attention to the health sector for the benefit of the teeming populace of the state.
Senator Kwankwaso, the proprietor of the college, tasked the new registered nurses to be good ambassadors of the College and conduct themselves within the ethics of their profession. Kwankwaso said that the nursing council had approved for the college to run courses in community nursing and community midwifery beginning from September this year. With this, he said that efforts to upgrade the college to a medical university will be sustained. This will be a game-changer as only about 37 tertiary institutions are fully accredited to offer medicine and surgery to aspiring candidates.
Dearth of medical personnel in Kano State concerning.
Earlier, the college provost, Hajiya Halima Muhammad Yunusa, said that the recipients of the certificates were the pioneer products of the college, who were admitted three years ago and successfully completed their studies. She called on the well-to-do in Nigeria to sponsor children of the less privileged to study in the medical-related fields for more female health personnel in the state. In 2022, the chairman of the Kano State branch of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Abdullahi Kabir Sulaiman, had said that only 533 medical doctors are on the payroll of the Kano State government.
According to him, the poor condition of service and remuneration of healthcare workers had caused a massive brain drain in the healthcare industry in the state. He had said that many doctors had left the state civil service for jobs at federal government hospitals and other states with better welfare packages. He had thus advised the state government to address the pay disparity between state and federal health workers to mitigate the problem of internal and external brain drain.
Nigeria still falls short of the recommended doctor ratio.
Meanwhile, the NMA had revealed that Nigeria currently has a doctor-to-patient ratio of one doctor to 4000-5000 patients instead of the one doctor to 600 patient ratio recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The association had insisted that just about 30,000 medical doctors were currently practicing in Nigeria out of the about 80,000 registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) from 1960 to date. So, medical associations and experts have said that persistent brain drain by doctors has continued to deplete the country medical care expertise and is taking the country farther away from the recommended number of doctors per population.
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