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Medical brain drain in Africa

By sara on May 25, 2007
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Sources: Center for Global Development (http://www.cgdev.org/conten...) and Center for Global Development (http://www.cgdev.org/conten...)

Human resources for health in Africa represents an important indicator for the health of the region. Doctors and nurses leave their home country for a variety of reasons; to seek better pay overseas, access to education and new technologies, improved living conditions and opportunities for their families. But without professional medical care, the folks left behind will have less chance of achieving economic improvements - there are fewer doctors and nurses to care for the working population, children will leave school because of illness to take care of their families, and catastrophic spending will increase when medical care is sought far from home.

In CGD (data source) working paper 95, research fellow Michael Clemens and Gunilla Petterrsson estimate the number of African-born doctors and professional nurses working abroad in a developed countries circa 2000 using destination-country census data. They then compare this to the stocks of these workers in each country of origin.

They find that approximately 65,000 African-born physicians and 70,000 African-born professional nurses were working overseas in a developed country in the year 2000. This represents about one-fifth of African-born physicians in the world, and about one-tenth of African-born professional nurses. The fraction of health professionals abroad varies enormously across African countries, from 1% to over 70% according to occupation and country. These numbers are the first standardized, systematic, occupation-specific measure of skilled professionals working in developed countries and born in a large number of developing countries. Compilation of the dataset is a part of CGD's ongoing research on the links between international labor mobility and global development. —sara