Nigeria has the capacity to export medical officers to needy nations if available potential are adequately harnessed and planned.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa stated this while inaugurating the Collegiate System in the State’s Schools of Nursing at the College of Nursing, Agbor, Ika South council area.

Mr Okowa said rather than contemplate restricting medical practitioners from moving out of the country, more of them could be trained, and from the pool, enough would remain in the country while some could be exported to needy nations.

“Nigeria can leverage the massive demand for medical professionals trained in the country by signing bilateral agreements with foreign nations to train and export more of the professionals to those countries,” the governor stated.

He frowned upon medical professionals’ failure to demonstrate empathy toward patients, urging them to adhere to established ethics.

According to the Delta governor, Nigeria has the challenge of nurses, midwives and doctors leaving the country in droves, adversely affecting health care delivery.

“I think that as a nation, if we know where our strength lies, we can do things that can enable us to improve on where our strength lies,” Mr Okowa explained. “There is nothing wrong if there is a planned programme by Nigeria to train many more nurses than we need, and we enter into a bilateral relationship with other countries to export some of our nurses, midwives and doctors.”

He stressed that he was not “one of those that will come out to say that we are trying to make laws to stop or restrict the movement of medical personnel out of the country,” but called for a “planned programme” to train more than “our daily and yearly need and ensure that we are able to enter into strategic alliances with other countries.”

(NAN)