Don’t blame emigration for Africa’s health crisis

Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images Margaret Chan, the president of the World Health Organization, declared yesterday that the world is in need of at least 4 million health workers. “Some powerful countries have gone to Third World countries to recruit their doctors and nurses,” she said, leaving developing countries scrambling to provide adequate healthcare. The staffing problem ...

Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

Margaret Chan, the president of the World Health Organization, declared yesterday that the world is in need of at least 4 million health workers. “Some powerful countries have gone to Third World countries to recruit their doctors and nurses,” she said, leaving developing countries scrambling to provide adequate healthcare. The staffing problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa, she noted.

But according to a new working paper by Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development, “brain drain” isn’t necessarily the culprit. Clemens argues that other factors, notably geographic constraints, performance incentives, and the stress of primary care over disease prevention, are to blame for Africa’s generally low staffing levels and poor health conditions.

FP (with the CGD) also reported last year that most doctors and nurses in Mozambique, for instance, are unwilling to work in villages and slums where diseases are rife. And terrible working conditions and low pay in public hospitals lead health care workers to opt for private clinics. In Kenya, 3,000 nurses have left to work abroad—but more than 6,000 qualified nurses aren’t working in the country. So while developing countries may need millions more health professionals, they also need to create better infrastructure and incentives for the health professionals who are there already.

Prerna Mankad is a researcher at Foreign Policy.

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