Thursday, November 25, 2004

The brain drain and health

There are many big challenges facing Africa in the health domain: AIDS, malaria, access to clean water. But a factor critical to all those is a desperate shortage of health workers in many countries. This BBC article notes that there are more Malawian doctors in the English city of Manchester than there are in all of Malawi.

2 Comments:

At 10:20 AM, Blogger Chippla Vandu said...

I wouldn't want to blame medical (and other) professionals that run away from poorer countries. These folks are simply trying to develop themselves as well as build on their careers. The only problem lies in the fact that the Malawian government would likely have spent thousands of dollars to train these doctors only to lose them in the long run.

The solution to a problem such as this is that for professionals to remain in their countries of origin, working conditions and remunerations must be such that they can survive without too much problems. Otherwise, the market is wide open. They'd simply move elsewhere.

 
At 11:02 AM, Blogger Brian said...

Chippla, I don't blame the workers. I think most people would prefer to stay in their own countries if the economic and political situations were favorable enough.

 

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