Health Ministers Request Help To Combat Brain Drain
Friday, May 22, 2009
A group of health ministers from developing countries on Thursday approached health officials from developed countries at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva to request help with the creation and expansion of medical training centers in an effort to combat "brain drain," Nigeria's Guardian reports.
Nigeria is leading the effort, which aims to replace trained medical staff that have left the countries for developed nations. Nigeria, Kenya and a "few other nations" have told the WHA that they will "form a network of concerned ministers and come up with a statement and action plan," Babatunde Osotimehin, Nigeria's health minister, said. He added that they will ask developed countries to help create strategies to improve their existing health training infrastructure.
"So, if an institution is training 50 doctors today, can they help us to upgrade the facilities so that we can then train 75? I think that kind of useful dialogue has to take place. So, we are not asking them to pay any amount of money but they should return something to our system that is producing those professionals they are using," Osotimehin said.
He said that "training" and "investment in training" are among some of the specific requests they will make. Osotimehin said there are plans to draft a human resource policy that would address the issue. "A human resource policy is inevitable. This meeting is going to form a policy, which we have to sign on to as Commonwealth members to enable us hold ourselves accountable," he said (Muanya, Guardian, 5/22).
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