Dispatches From the Edge: Swine Flu Fallout; Obama’s Stance on Columbia

The recent scare has served to reveal one of medicine’s great scandals: the systematic plunder of nurses and doctors from the developing world by the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia.

A study by the George Washington University School of Public Health found that 30 percent of the medical workers in Ghana, 41.4 percent in Haiti, and 27.5 percent in Sri Lanka leave their countries to practice in the First World.

There are, for instance, more Malawi doctors practicing in England than there are in their native country. Some 13,000 doctors trained in sub-Saharan Africa are now practicing in the West. The result is that while Africa has 25 percent of the world’s disease burden, it has only 1.3 percent of its health workers.

According the United Nations Migration and Millennium Development Goal, “Poor countries, many of them with the fewest healthcare workers, but the highest infectious disease burdens, are ‘subsidizing’ the healthcare systems of wealthier countries.”

To read more, click here.