Kenya: New Brain Drain Threat Looms

The East African Standard (Nairobi), Harold Ayodo, Nairobi

Scientists have warned of a looming exodus of health experts from Kenya and other African countries to meet demand in the West.

Medical experts attending a conference at Kisumu's Great Lakes University said the US and the UK had new health care programmes that needed expatriates.  Prof David Sanders, the Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of West Cape, South Africa, said the US needed close to a million nurses.  "The UK needs 10,000 more doctors and 20,000 nurses, mostly from Africa because they are cheaper," Sanders said.

Developed countries save Sh11.5 million in training costs for each professional if the same expertise was exported from Africa. The researchers said most nurses from Kenya sought greener pastures in the West and Far East due to better pay and work conditions.

The experts heard that increasing poverty and inequality, made worse by inequitable globalisation, was among the causes of the health crisis in Africa. "Selective primary health care and inappropriate reforms in the continent are our undoing," Sanders said.

He spoke when he presented a paper, Human Resource Crisis in the Health Sector: A Challenge for Africa, at the Fifth Annual Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development in Africa.

The three-day conference has drawn scientists from Africa, Asia, US and UK.

"Africa is a net exporter to the rich world and a huge borrower of colossal amounts of money for developing health care," Sanders said. He said African governments should offer better pay to medical personnel and invest on postgraduate training for better services.

Sanders regretted that many studies in Africa were negative towards structural adjustment and effects on health outcomes.

"Africa spends more on debt servicing each year than on health and education. Drawing poor countries into the global economy could address fundamental aspirations," he said.

Sanders said Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region in the world where the number of people living in abject poverty doubled between 1981 and 2001. "Figures from the World Bank show that 313 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (half the population) live below a dollar a day," he said.