The Nigerian Medical Association, Lagos State Chapter on Thursday said the exodus of doctors from Nigeria had reached an alarming proportion and called for improved health sector funding to discourage it.

The Nigerian Medical Association, Lagos State Chapter on Thursday said the exodus of doctors from Nigeria had reached an alarming proportion and called for improved health sector funding to discourage it.

The Chairman, Dr Olumuyiwa Odusote, said in Lagos that more than 40,000 of the 75,000 registered Nigerian doctors, were practising abroad while 70 per cent in the country were thinking of picking jobs outside.
The Chairman, Dr Olumuyiwa Odusote, said in Lagos that more than 40,000 of the 75,000 registered Nigerian doctors, were practising abroad while 70 per cent in the country were thinking of picking jobs outside.

According to him, over 100 doctors resigned from the University College Hospital, Ibadan, in 2017 while about 800 doctors resigned from Lagos State hospitals in the last two years.

Odusote described the situation as worrisome.

“The health crisis in Nigeria is unprecedented as the mass exodus hits an alarming proportion.

“Already, it takes a new patient two to three hours to see a doctor.

“Over 100 doctors have resigned from the University College Hospital, Ibadan, this year; about 800 doctors resigned from Lagos State hospitals in the last two years, and over 50 in November alone.

“Kebbi State has been unable to employ a single doctor in two years despite multiple adverts for employment; over 200 doctors and nurses have resigned from Ladoke Akintola Teaching Hospital this year.

“Seventy per cent of Nigerian doctors are making plans to leave for foreign lands and are taking exams to that effect,” he said.

The chairman said that 236 doctors wrote primaries for West Africa College of Physicians in 2017 to gain admission into Nigerian teaching hospitals.

He said that in 2012, more than 1,000 doctors had written the same exams and 660 of them had written the Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board Examination (PLAB) to practise in the UK over those primaries.

“Our healthcare system has been neglected for an extended period, evidenced by lack of funding, under-supply, inefficiency, decrepit equipment, poor quality, needless deaths and unhappy workforce.

“Today, many of the country’s general hospitals, with the exception of those in Lagos, are not in good condition and are breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

“Many also do not have sufficient beds; so, corridors are turned to sleeping wards,” he said.

He said that there was the need for increased number of public health centres fully equipped with adequate drugs and modern facilities and manned by specialists.

Cell cycle proteins help immune cells trap microbes with nets made of DNA

In your bloodstream, there are immune cells called neutrophils that, when faced with a pathogenic threat, will expel their DNA like a net to contain it. These DNA snares are called neutrophil extracellular traps or NETs. Researchers from Germany and the United States describe an important step in how these NETs are released and how they stop a fungus from establishing an infection in mice and human cells in the journal Developmental Cell.
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"This is basically a type of beneficial cell suicide," says first author Borko Amulic, a postdoc in the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology and a newly appointed Lecturer at the University of Bristol. "When neutrophils get overwhelmed, when they can no longer deal with a microbial threat by just engulfing it, that's when the NETs are released."

Once a neutrophil is forced induced to release its NETs, it anchors itself in the tissue and breaks down its nuclear envelope: the barrier between the nuclear DNA and the rest of the cell. The researchers were intrigued by this because, normally, cells only break down their nuclear envelope before they divide. Zychlinsky, Amulic, and colleagues hypothesized that neutrophils were using the same cell cycle proteins used for cell division to release the NETs.

To test this, the researchers inhibited the cell cycle proteins in mouse neutrophils so that fewer NETs were released and found that mice were no longer able to clear fungal infections. Then, they observed human brains with fungal infections and confirmed that our neutrophils are also using cell cycle proteins.

"The ultimate goal for this research is to interfere clinically, either when too few or too many NETs are being produced," says Amulic. "Also, this is just a really fascinating cell biological phenomenon."