Africa 'being drained of doctors'
2008-01-10 13:22
London - One in five African-born doctors work abroad in developed countries, according to a study highlighting the exodus of physicians and nurses critical to a region struggling with a worsening health crisis.
The United States researchers used census data on arriving African health professionals to nine major destination countries and said the numbers had increased since they carried out the survey between 1999 and 2001.
The reasons were clear, said Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development in Washington DC, who led the study published on Thursday.
Clemens said: "A Kenyan nurse working in London isn't taking care of sick people in Kenya, but that nurse is pursuing professional possibilities that aren't available to her at home."
Civil wars, economic woes
While emigration was not a new phenomenon, its acceleration since the independence era of the 1960s had hit the health sector the hardest with conflict, poverty and instability driving many to work in richer countries.
In their study, the researchers estimated that about 135 000 African-born physicians and professional nurses practice overseas in developed countries. This worked out to about one-fifth of the doctors and 10% of the nurses.
Yet the numbers vary greatly, with recent civil wars or economic woes playing big factors, the researchers said.
"Angola, Congo-Brazzaville (Republic of Congo), Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone all experienced civil war in the 1990s and all had lost more than 40% of their physicians by 2000," the researchers wrote in the journal Human Resources for Health.
They added: "Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe all experienced decades of economic stagnation in the late 20th century and by its end, each had lost more than half its physicians."
At the same time more stable and prosperous countries such as Botswana, South Africa and Ivory Coast - before it slipped into civil war - managed to keep their doctors.