EMIGRATION OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS: AN IMPEDIMENT FOR ACHIEVING HEALTH MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 4 & 5 IN NIGERIA By LEO. Abejide, Abdullahi Bara’atu & Abdullahi Zainab Dept. of Geography, Faculty of Social Science, Federal University Lafia, Nasarawa State. ABSTRACT The paper examined the spatio-temporal trends, causes and effects of emigration of health professionals on the indicators of MDGs 4 and 5. Push-Pull Theory and Good Governance Model provided the frameworks. Primary data were collected and analyzed on the dynamics and consequences of emigration of health professionals between 1986 and 2010 in three selected health institutions in Southwestern Nigeria, and the secondary data were adopted and analyzed from the NDHS 2008 and 2013 database. The findings showed that the increase in the emigration of health professionals had contributed to the inability of Nigeria to achieve goals 4 and 5, particularly in the rural residency. Rich countries of the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia were benefitting countries of destination. The study concludes that the alarming rate of emigration of health professionals if not checked, could hamper the fragile progresses of MDGs 4 and 5 and healthcare delivery in Nigeria. Keywords: Emigration of Health Professionals, Health Millennium Development Goals, Developing and Developed Countries, Healthcare delivery in Nigeria. 1 Introduction 1.1 Background of the Paper The inability of developing and poor countries of the world to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 targets, which meant to reduce child mortality by two- thirds and improve maternal health by three-quarters respectively has become a challenging issue among inter-governmental agencies and international organizations, after 15 years of its implementation. The planning and implementation of the programme were not carried out on a leveled playing field of availability and accessibility of health professionals between the world’s poorest and richest countries (Martineau, Decker & Bundred, 2002). This was obvious at the rate in which the core health professionals (doctors, nurses and other paramedics) required for the implementation of the programme moving away from their home countries (where they are needed most) to developed and rich countries where they were supposedly superfluous (Dussault & Franceschini, 2003 & Abejide, 2009). Majority of the world’s poorest countries, particularly those in the sub-Saharan Africa countries have been experiencing losses of their skilled health professionals, ever before the formulation and during the implementation of the health MDGs via brain drain (Dovlo & Martineau, 2004; Stilwell, 2004; Hagopian, 2004, 2005; Kirigia et al, 2007; Pillay, 2007; Abejide, 2009; Fadayomi, 2009; Mullan et al, 2011 & Akhenaten et al, 2013). Despite the fact that those underprivileged countries are resource-constrained, crisis prone and war-ravaged and do not have enough medical schools to train skilled health professionals, yet, few of them being trained locally are leaving their home countries to the world’s richest countries (Martineau, Decker and Bundred, 2002; Abejide, 2009 & Mullan et al, 2011). This therefore resulted in a loss of capacity of the health systems to deliver quality healthcare (MDGs 4 & 5 inclusive) equitably, mostly, in the rural areas of the sub-region and Africa in general. However, the achievements of