Nursing News:
Rich countries grab medical professionals from Africa

By DULUE MBACHU, Associated Press Writer

LAGOS, Nigeria - Lagos Island Hospital lost two of its best surgeons and several nurses to Gulf nations, Europe and America last year, leaving it in a dire situation shared by hospitals across the developing world.

"It is usually the most skilled and experienced who leave. We lose their skills and there's no one to train new people," Lagos Island's Dr. John Adebowale said Wednesday, the day a new report was released detailing the costs of the migration of medical professionals from poor to rich countries.

Cheap labor from the developing world doesn't just mean taxi drivers, nannies and maids. Rich countries save hundreds of thousands of dollars in training on the doctors and nurses they poach from poor nations, creating a shortage of health care workers in those countries, according to the report from the International Organization for Migration.

The intergovernmental group, which often works closely with the United Nations (news - web sites) on immigration and refugee issues, estimated it would have cost rich nations about $184,000 to train each of the estimated 3 million professionals educated in poor countries now working in the developed world, for a "staggering" total savings of $552 billion.

Poor nations, meanwhile, spend $500 million a year training health workers, according to the report presented at a two-day meeting to discuss the impact of the migration of Africans.

The report's author and International Organization for Migration deputy director general Ndioro Ndiaye said developed countries recruited from poor nations in part because of nurse and doctor shortages in the West.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the "brain drain" affects all countries, but hits Africa harder than other continents.

"The fact that we have limited resources also increases the relative cost of education and training. So when skilled professionals migrate we are doubly affected," Meles said.

It is estimated that by 2025 one in 10 Africans will work outside their own country. In an attempt to address the problem, the International Organization for Migration is encouraging rich countries pay for professionals from poor countries to return to their homes to work for an unspecified time each year. Belgium, working through the migration organization, underwrites such working trips for professionals from its former colonies Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, an official at the Belgian Embassy in Rwanda said Wednesday.

In Nigeria, Lagos Island Hospital wears a new coat of cream paint, giving the hospital a healthy look that belies its problems. Poor salaries are paid late and overworked doctors have to work with outdated equipment, leaving most dissatisfied and eager to leave, Adebowale said.

For those health professionals left behind, it means more work. More than 80 percent of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day and can't afford expensive privately run hospitals providing relatively better service. They flock to government-subsidized hospitals, such as Lagos Island Hospital, where over-stretched staff barely meet overwhelming demand.

The International Organization for Migration said 23,000 African health professionals emigrate every year. "Of course I know people who have gone overseas," Dr. Kassahun Gemerew said Wednesday from the decrepit main building of Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the Ethiopian capital. "Our hospitals lack the facilities of Western hospitals and it means we cannot provide the full medical support we were trained for."

But Kassahun, a surgeon who trained in Ethiopia for six years, said he was staying in Africa. "If colleagues leave it is a loss to the country and means we have to work harder. I have decided to stay because I feel a commitment to my country," Kassahun said.

Associated Press Writer Anthony Mitchell in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.