Doctors recruited from Nigeria to work in the United Kingdom hospitals have lamented that they are being exploited.
The doctors believe they are being overworked and fear they may put their patients’ health at risk.
The investigation showed evidence of how a British healthcare company recruit doctors from Nigeria to work in private hospitals under conditions not allowed in the National Health Service.
One of the doctors who spoke with the BBC, Augustine Enekwechi, a Nigerian doctor, who worked at Nuffield Health Leeds Hospital in 2021, said he was approached by NES Healthcare, a private company that specialises in employing doctors from overseas, and was offered visa sponsorship and a potential job.
The doctor said he failed to notice that the NES contract opted him out of the law that protects UK workers from excessive working hours and left him vulnerable to a range of salary deductions.
Enekwechi added that his hours were extreme – on-call 24 hours a day for a week at a time – and that he was unable to leave the hospital grounds. He says working there felt like being in “a prison”.
