The United Kingdom may be a land of opportunities, especially for those seeking better life for themselves, however, such opportunities seem to be shrinking, especially for Nigerian-trained medical doctors.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Request by a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, reveal that three-quarters of the doctors struck off the General Medical Council (GMC) register in the past years are foreign-trained and that those trained in Nigeria rank second on the list of those removed from the professional register of the GMC .
According to the Daily Mail, India-trained doctors top the list of foreign-trained doctors to be struck off the GMC register in the past five years and Nigeria-trained doctors have the record of being second.
Egypt-trained doctors occupy the third spot. The paper revealed further that “194 of the 285 doctors struck off for misconduct or incompetence in the past five years were foreign-trained, while 29 of the 39 removed from the medical register in the past year received their medical degree overseas.”
Continuing, the paper disclosed that “with only one-third of the 250,000 doctors on the medical register trained outside the United Kingdom, this means that those from overseas were more than five times likely than British doctors to be banned.”
This is in sharp contrast to Hong Kong, which has the best record, “with none of more than 700 doctors working here – in the UK – struck off or disciplined in the past five years. New Zealand’s 600 medics also have a clean record.”
According to the report, India, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, France, Uganda and Cameroun have the highest cases of ‘danger doctors’.
With growing concerns over the incident, health experts in the UK are calling for effective test and examination of doctors trained abroad before they could be licensed to practice in the UK.