More than 7,000 pharmacists emigrated from Nigeria in the last two years, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), has revealed. Prof. Cyril Usifoh, President of the society who made this known to newsmen in Gombe, Tuesday, noted that the pharmacists left Nigeria for a better practice environment abroad.
He stated that the issue of brain drain, which remained one of the major challenges in the health sector, needed serious attention in the interest of the well-being of Nigerians.
Usifoh said the government needed to create an environment conducive for pharmacists to work to reverse the trend and to encourage pharmacists to stay and contribute to the development of the country.
“If you want to stop brain drain, you will create conditions to enable people not to go.
“Government should create the enabling environment that will prevent people from leaving, but to come here.
“I am confident that when the opportunities are there, you will have what we call brain gain; they will come back: we are here, we are not leaving,’’ he said.
Usifoh, a professor of Pharmacy said part of PSN’s activities as an association was to make Nigeria more self-sufficient and to improve the health sector.
On the society’s 96th annual conference holding in Gombe State, the president said the PSN was in the state to evaluate its works in the past one year and to strategise on ways to improve the health sector.
