Poaching doctors from poor countries: A crime against humanity?

by Don Owers (don.o AT bigpond net au) Original in December 2006 newsletter(pdf - 315k) of Sustainable Population Australian (www.population.org.au) Rich countries rely on recruiting foreign health and medical staff, increasingly from Asia and Africa. The saving in training costs by skilled immigration world wide amounts to $552 Billion, almost equal to the third world debt. The June 2005 a New Internationalist article on Health and Migration extracted from the World Health Organisation report, describes the impact on third world countries of the loss of their medical staff. Some of the points made are: Zambia only retained (due to migration) 50 of the last 600 physicians it trained. The Philippines loses 14,000 nurses abroad every year, more than they are training. There is one optometrist for every 4000 people in the UK; in Africa it is one to a million and in Mali it is one to 8 million (New Scientist, August 20, 2005) Almost 25% of doctors in Australia Canada and the US are overseas trained. There are more doctors from Ethiopia in Washington DC than there are in Ethiopia and more doctors from Benin working in France than there are in Benin. And it gets worse. Some of the trained people get caught up with migration agencies and have much of their salary deducted for "expenses". Some work for nothing during training periods. The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says Australia is short nearly 2000 doctors and at the present rate of training will be 40,000 nurses short by 2010. Consequently one of the largest intakes in Australia's Skills Migration scheme has been doctors, nurses and even medical researchers. At the Mersey Community hospital at Latrobe there is not one Australian-trained doctor. At Launceston General half the doctors are overseas trained, with ten recruited from Bangladesh . The Government seems happy to take doctors from poor countries where the loss of just one doctor must surely outweigh any minor development aid we provide. In fact, since it must inevitably lead to avoidable deaths, especially in Africa, doctorpoaching should be described as a crime against humanity. It must be amongst the most damaging economic processes ever to be inflicted upon a third world country. The Minister for Immigration says that Australia has adopted a policy of not taking skilled migrants from disadvantaged countries. But she ignores the effect of 'musical skills'. Britain recruits around 15,000 nurses a year from other countries and loses around 8,000 to emigration, many to Australia. South Africa loses almost half its doctors to Britain and Australia and it recruits from its northern, and far poorer, neighbours. Australia, by recruiting trained medical staff from overseas, even from Britain, fuels the demand for medical staff from disadvantaged countries and in so doing is plundering their intellectual resources. The parliamentary secretary to the Immigration Minister recently stated that Australia must increase skilled immigration numbers because we cannot train enough of our own people. He was referring to all disciplines, not just health professionals. Australia, one of the world's richest nations, has neglected its own training and education for years. In this interconnected world, the impact is rebounding on the world's poorest nations. Once, Australia provided education for less fortunate nations through the Columbo Plan. Today we cannot afford to educate our own. We subsidize our Universities by enrolling fee-paying overseas students with the promise of Australian Residency as an incentive. There is no long term planning even for our own future needs. The solutions are not simple. Nor will they be cheap. The most expensive and longest training has suffered the biggest cut backs in what has been essentially a cost cutting exercise. For instance, it takes around 14 years to train a school leaver to become a competent surgeon at around 32 years of age and at present there are limited training places available. Governments of developed nations, ours and others, are unlikely to willingly give up the cash cow of skills migration. The benefits of skills training particularly at higher levels, are remote from the next election. Already Australia's defence budget exceeds that for education and training. We need to focus the attention of humanitarian groups on the damaging impacts of skills immigration, to campaign against the practise and for an international agreement requiring developed notions to recompense the homeland nations for the training cost of the imported skilled workers. When confronted by so many failures of government and with an opposition often indistinguishable in its policies, it is easy to champion causes that are really just symptoms of a much deeper malaise. Those who campaign vigorously for refugee rights often miss the point that refugees generally don't want to leave their place of birth and travel by dangerous means to a strange land with different cultures. They are forced to do so for social, political or environmental reasons which are not addressed by accepting them in Australia. It would be tempting but incorrect to say that we had no part in their expulsion and are powerless to prevent it occurring. The developed countries are largely to blame for the failure of third world countries. We steal their natural resources, timber, fish, diamonds minerals and enslave their poor in sweated workshops to feed our demand for consumer goods. And, as if to make sure they can never rise out of their predicament,