The cost of health professionals' brain drain in Kenya

Kirigia, Joses Muthuri; Gbary, A. R.; Muthuri, Lenity Kainyu; Nyoni, Jennifer; Seddoh, Anthony Theophilus

doi:10.1186/1472-6963-6-89

Cited by 158 publications

(146 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The migration of physicians from underdeveloped countries to the United States is a serious concern, 8,[14][15] with economic 16 as well as health implications. Medical schools in foreign countries are sometimes complicit in the strategy of wealthy countries to use foreign-trained physicians to meet the demands for health professionals, often encouraging their students to emigrate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Primary Care Physician Workforce: Ethical and Policy Implications

Starfield

Fryer²

2007

The Annals of Family Medicine

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PURPOSE We undertook a study to examine the characteristics of countries exporting physicians to the United States according to their relative contribution to the primary care supply in the United States. METHODSWe used data from the World Health Organization and from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfi le to gather sociodemographic, health system, and health characteristics of countries and the number of international medical graduates (IMGs) for the countries, according to the specialty of their practice in the United States.RESULTS Countries whose medical school graduates added a relatively greater percentage of the primary care physicians than the overall percentage of primary care physicians in the United States (31%) were poor countries with relatively extreme physician shortages, high infant mortality rates, lower life expectancies, and lower immunization rates than countries contributing relatively more specialists to the US physician workforce.CONCLUSION The United States disproportionately uses graduates of foreign medical schools from the poorest and most deprived countries to maintain its primary care physician supply. The ethical aspects of depending on foreign medical graduates is an important issue, especially when it deprives disadvantaged countries of their graduates to buttress a declining US primary care physician supply.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Primary Care Physician Workforce: Ethical and Policy Implications

Starfield

Fryer²

2007

The Annals of Family Medicine

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“…20 Physician emigration remained very common; between 1993 and 2001, 68% of Ghanaian medical graduates left Ghana. 23 In the year 2000, 1469 physicians trained in Ghana were recorded as living in OECD countries. This represented an expatriation rate of 31.2%.…”

Section: Ghanamentioning

confidence: 99%

Private sector contributions and their effect on physician emigration in the developing world

Loh

Ugarte-Gil

Darko

2013

Bull. World Health Organ.

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“…The developed countries health care needs (and demand) and their competitive advantages in implementing active employment of additional health workers from low income countries is reported to have aggravated the problem of shortages in source countries, increased the costs of producing new (more) health workers to replace those who migrate to high income countries. In total, this has increased the loss due to limited returns from training and educating health workers (WHO, 2006;Bach, 2006;Kirigia et al, 2006). The increased pace of globalization which goes hand in hand with a free flow of information about labour markets is believed to have added the momentum on the speed of health worker migration to developed countries (WHO, 2006;Bach, 2006;Kirigia et al, 2006).…”

Section: The Global Context and Its Role And Influences On Human Resomentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehensive health workforce planning: re-consideration of the primary health care approach as a tool for addressing the human resource for health crisis in low and middle income countries

Munga

Mwangu

2013

Tanzania J Hlth Res

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Although the Human Resources for Health (HRH) crisis is apparently not new in the public health agenda of many countries, not many low and middle income countries are using Primary Health Care (PHC) as a tool for planning and addressing the crisis in a comprehensive manner. The aim of this paper is to appraise the inadequacies of the existing planning approaches in addressing the growing HRH crisis in resource limited settings. A descriptive literature review of selected case studies in middle and low income countries reinforced with the evidence from Tanzania was used. Consultations with experts in the field were also made. In this review, we propose a conceptual framework that describes planning may only be effective if it is structured to embrace the fundamental principles of PHC. We place the core principles of PHC at the centre of HRH planning as we acknowledge its major perspective that the effectiveness of any public health policy depends on the degree to which it envisages to address public health problems multidimensionally and comprehensively. The proponents of PHC approach in planning have identified intersectoral action and collaboration and comprehensive approach as the two basic principles that policies and plans should accentuate in order to make them effective in realizing their pre-determined goals. Two conclusions are made: Firstly, comprehensive health workforce planning is not widely known and thus not frequently used in HRH planning or analysis of health workforce issues; Secondly, comprehensiveness in HRH planning is important but not sufficient in ensuring that all the ingredients of HRH crisis are eliminated. In order to be effective and sustainable, the approach need to evoke three basic values namely effectiveness, efficiency and equity.

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The cost of health professionals' brain drain in Kenya

Cited by 158 publications

References 13 publications

The Primary Care Physician Workforce: Ethical and Policy Implications

The Primary Care Physician Workforce: Ethical and Policy Implications

Private sector contributions and their effect on physician emigration in the developing world

Comprehensive health workforce planning: re-consideration of the primary health care approach as a tool for addressing the human resource for health crisis in low and middle income countries

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