Should active recruitment of health workers from sub-Saharan Africa be viewed as a crime?

Mills, Edward J., Schabas, William A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7462-4284, Volmink, Jimmy, Walker, Roderick, Ford, Nathan, Katabira, Elly, Anema, Aranka, Joffres, Michel, Cahn, Pedro and Montaner, Julio (2008) Should active recruitment of health workers from sub-Saharan Africa be viewed as a crime? The Lancet, 371 (9613) . pp. 685-688. ISSN 0140-6736 [Article] (doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60308-6)

Abstract

Shortages of health-care staff are endemic in sub-Saharan Africa (table). Overall, there is one physician for every 8000 people in the region. In the worst affected countries, such as Malawi, the physician-to-population ratio is just 0·02 for every 1000 (one per 50 000). There are also huge disparities between rural and urban areas: rural parts of South Africa have 14 times fewer doctors than the national average. These numbers are very different to those in developed countries: the UK, for example, has over 100 times more physicians per population than Malawi. Furthermore, almost one in ten doctors working in the UK are from Africa. The insufficiency of health staff to provide even basic services is one of the most pressing impediments to health-care delivery in resource-poor settings. The consequences are clearly shown by the inverse relation that exists between health-care worker density and mortality.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

0Downloads

6 month trend

524Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.