More than 4,691 Nigerian doctors have relocated to the United Kingdom since between May 29, 2023 to date, according to UK General Medical Council (GMC).

The UK GMC is a public official register detailing the number of practising doctors in the UK alongside other details such as their areas of speciality, country of training, among others.

As of May 28, 2025, official records showed that the number of Nigerian-trained doctors in the UK was a little over 11,000. The figure has grown significantly since then.

The figure put the total number of Nigeria-trained doctors currently practising in the UK to about 15,692, making Nigeria one of the largest sources of foreign-trained doctors in Britain, second only to India

The exodus of doctors comes as Nigeria’s doctor-to-population ratio hovers around 3.9 per 10,000 people, far below the minimum threshold recommended by the World Health Organisation.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says that raining and flooding will increase cholera outbreak in ten prone states.

They are Adamawa, Enugu, Kaduna, Kogi, Niger, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Taraba, and Kwara.

NCDC, in a statement, yesterday, said the alarm followed flood predictions issued by the Federal Ministry of Environment and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency indicating that the aforementioned states would experience heavy rainfall and flooding between 13th and 17th April 2026.

NCDC noted that, already, cases of cholera are on the rise across the cholera-prone states, and that could simply be attributed to the rainy season, and flood that might have contaminated people’s sources of food and water.

It said: “Recent national surveillance data show increasing cholera activity across multiple states.

Flooding during this period can rapidly increase the risk of disease outbreaks due to contamination of drinking water sources, disruption of sanitation systems, and increased exposure of communities to unsafe environmental conditions.

Importantly, these risks are preventable with early action.”

the Federal Government had in a document dated April 1, 2026, by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, approved sweeping tariff adjustments across 127 product lines, including antimalarial medicaments now pegged at 20 percent, as part of efforts to stimulate growth and ease the cost of critical imports.

Reacting to the development, the  President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Ayuba-Tanko Ibrahim, described the tariff cut as a positive step but cautioned that the gains would depend on complementary policy actions.

“A drop in duties on drugs and pharmaceutical products is quite laudable. In normal circumstances, this should signpost a drop in prices of these products and promote accessibility to drugs and healthcare, albeit legitimately.

“The PSN appreciates and commends the commitment of the federal government in the ensuing scenario,” he said.

Emphasising that more is needed to be done to sanitise the sector, Ibrahim said: “It is noteworthy that the federal government must do a little more in terms of regulation and control of drug matters in Nigeria.

‘’Government must see a need for urgent intervention with a template akin to an all-purpose special vehicle that can help fix fundamental issues pertaining to local manufacture and drug prices.

” There is also a need to support local content in Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, APIs, and vaccines availability to increase the contribution of the pharmaceutical sector to national GDP, ’’ he said.