African countries pay to train doctors for the West

IN Canada, 22% of working doctors were trained in Africa - with most of them from South Africa and Zimbabwe.

This is revealed in a study, published in the British Medical Journal, of the impact of doctors who leave their countries to pursue career opportunities abroad.

South Africa has a dire shortage of doctors and nurses.

The study, published late last year, estimated that sub-Saharan African countries had lost billions of rands - spent on educating and training doctors who then emigrated.

South Africa incurred the highest costs for medical education and the lowest return on investment.

According to the study, it cost South Africa, on average R461975 to train a doctor.

In interviews with South African health workers, 58% said they intended to emigrate.

Professor Edward Mills, the chairman of global health at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who led the team that carried out the study, said the aim had been to estimate the loss in investment of domestically educated doctors migrating from sub-Saharan African countries to Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

Britain benefited most from an influx of trained doctors, followed by the US, Australia and Canada.

Nine sub-Saharan countries that lost doctors were Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Mills said,

"Developing countries are effectively paying to train doctors that eventually end up in the healthcare services of developed countries."

He said the losses to Africa would be vastly greater if the study had included other professions, such as nurses and engineers - or if it considered doctors who emigrated but could not be licensed as doctors in the countries in which they settled. The study did not include doctors and health workers who left Africa to work in Arab countries.