Uganda: Dictators Could Care Less for Doctors

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The Monitor (Kampala)

8 March 2008
Posted to the web 10 March 2008

Kiflu Hussain

While most developing countries suffer from "brain drain" Israel by contrast, so said Amy Chua author of "World on fire," has always been a magnet for talented Jews who move to Israel out of ideology.

Had Chua probed further in history, she would have found out that other talented people too, namely Africans, used to go back to their ancestral homeland from wherever they departed the moment they concluded the affair that took them there. This was the way with Ethiopians until the 1974 revolution that brought the army to power.

Consequently, a considerable number of the intelligentsia chose to remain inside with a motto "If you can't fight them join them and try to mould them." Two things lulled the intelligentsia; the regime's rhetoric on the sovereignty of Ethiopia, albeit its tendency to use might to solve problems.

Its non-interference in professions unless its power was threatened. To show how brain drain was a concern, a fable used to fly around using the name of a renowned bio-chemist with a Ph.D. The bio-chemist was supposed to attend a conference in Cambridge. But, the regime wanted to make sure that he would return.

So, a soldier was sent to spy on him posing as a businessman who is processing his trip to London at the immigration office around the same time. After befriending him and confiding his innermost feelings, asked the doctor whether he's smart enough to defect to the west. The Ph.D holder replied, do you think I would trust my country with corporals like you and remain there?

What triggered this flashback is the recent so-called conference held right here in Kampala to address the global shortage of health workers. According to the March 4 Daily Monitor, the World Health Organisation said the shortage is affecting basic services such as immunisations, childbirth and treatment of diseases. Also, 57 countries are affected of which most are in Africa. President Museveni too was reported as saying "International recruitment practices are threatening to deplete Uganda of its scarce and highly professional health workers."

To find out how much gap there often is between these flowery words and deeds, one doesn't have to go farther than the tragic incident at Lira Referral Hospital. No matter how one may question the morality of those medical professionals vis-à-vis the Hippocratic oath they took, the ultimate responsibility lies with the government. Yet, the lack of commitment of the Ugandan government may pale by comparison with its counterpart where according to a 2007 survey that revealed there's roughly one doctor to 30,000 Ethiopians.

In 1992, not only in contravention of academic freedom, but also in violation of civil liberty, the regime summarily dismissed 42 accomplished professors and faculty members from Addis Ababa University.

Then President of the transitional government, Meles Zenawi told journalists after that, "If a physics lecturer talks about politics in the classroom, then that faculty has no need of him."

Most of these scholars have been employed by prestigious universities in the west. This regime also jailed a respected and one time Dean of the medical faculty, Professor Asrat Woldeyes in a disease infested concentration camp on trumped-up charges where he died. He was Ethiopia's first and celebrated surgeon whom Amnesty International described as a prisoner of conscience.

More pertinent is the utterance made by Mr Zenawi in March 2007 during a health care conference in Addis. He stunned everybody by saying "We don't need doctors--Let the doctors leave to wherever they want." He gave this response to concern about the doctor-drain in Ethiopia where as many as 80 percent of Ethiopian trained doctors leave for better paid jobs elsewhere.

The bottom line is; isn't it futile, even wasteful to hold a fancy conference amidst dictators who violate fundamental human rights with impunity? How can it be expected that they give due consideration to human capital and extend special courtesy to doctors?

Mr Hussain is an Ethiopian refugee in Uganda.

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