Public Agenda (Accra)
25 February 2008
editorial
Anybody tracking the movement of health experts from Africa to Europe in search of greener pastures must be getting worried at the rate at which the brain-drain wagon is moving.
A report by a group health experts advocating the discontinuance of the brain drain of African health workers says more than 13,000 doctors trained in sub-Saharan Africa are now practicing in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia, leaving behind colleagues struggling to cope with impossible caseloads.
Besides, African nurses and pharmacists also are targeted by clinics, hospitals and drug store chains offering better pay, legal assistance with immigration and moving expenses, said the experts, who include the heads of several schools of pharmacy or medicine in African countries.
According to the report, released last Thursday, rich countries are poaching so many African health workers that the practice should be viewed as a crime.
The report cited estimates showing Ghana had spent $70 million training health professionals who then left to work in Britain. "In comparison, by recruiting Ghanaian doctors, the U.K. saved about 65 million pounds ($130 million) in training costs between 1998 and 2002, while their contribution to service provision is estimated at around 39 million pounds ($80 million) a year," they wrote.
The study suggested that it is time for on the African countries worse hit by the recruitment of their health workers to pursue as as a crime as a crime at the International Court of Justice. Indeed Ghana will be have a strong case to prove that a direct consequence of the exodus of its health workers are the empty hospitals in the most deripved part of the country.
Last week, the Northern Regional Directorate of Health Services (RDHS) said it was faced with the shortage of critical staff such as doctors, professional nurses, pharmacist, midwives and laboratory technicians.
The Regional Director said out of eight medical doctors posted to the region last year only one reported.
He said, out of three other specialists, including a physician and a gynaecologist who were posted to the region only the physician had reported at post. The lack of doctors is no doubt the serious health problem threatening health delivery in Ghana.
There is ample evidence that while many doctors and nurses were leaving freely, some of them were also being actively recruited.
What further evidence does Ghana need to send a strong signal to the international community, especially Britain that it is criminal for them to continue to price away health experts trained at the expense of the taxpayer.
Countries that engage in the recruitment of our doctors and nurses should "make amends" by offering training, building and staffing new health schools and providing ways for health workers to stay in their own countries.
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