http://www.africasia.com/services/ne...6.g2jd59lp.php

05/07/2005 02:36 LONDON (AFP)
Britain accused of "looting" Africa's doctors despite anti-poverty call
Britain faced charges of hypocrisy for urging the world's most powerful nations to end poverty in Africa while it "systematically robs" the world's poorest countries of its doctors and nurses.

Two-thirds of the doctors and 40 percent of the nurses who entered the British job market last year were trained outside Britain, many of them in Africa, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.

BMA chairman James Johnson said "the rape of the poorest countries must stop" as British Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to open a summit Wednesday of Group of Eight (G8) leaders devoted to fighting poverty in Africa.

"It is completely pointless for the UK (United Kingdom) to give aid to Africa if we then systematically rob them of their most precious resource, the skilled people who have the practical ability to prevent and treat disease," Johnson said.

"As long as we cynically underproduce doctors and nurses in this country, the world's poorest countries will pay the price," he added.

The trend of recruiting doctors and nurses from poor countries is not recent, the BMA said.

In 2003, 5,880 work permits were granted to doctors and nurses from South Africa, 2,825 from Zimbabwe, 1,510 from Nigeria, and 850 from Ghana.

In all, 31 percent of doctors currently working in Britain were trained overseas, compared to five percent in France and Germany, according to the Lancet, a specialized medical publication.

Matching the criticism from the BMA was the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which reported that 55,000 foreign nurses, including 16,000 from Africa, had been recruited in Britain since 1999.

Such recruitment provides a considerable saving for the British economy.

The BMA said it would have cost the British government 1.95 billion pounds (2.93 billion euros, 3.4 billion dollars) to train the same number of doctors and nurses who came from sub-Saharan Africa since 1999.

The figure far exceeds the 560 million pounds given to African hospitals over the same period by the international development ministry.

The "looting" is such that Birmingham, the second most populous city in England, now has more nurses from Malawi than Malawi itself, according to the

In Ghana, the situation is as bleak.

"Tony Blair says Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world, but then why does the UK rob us of our medical staff," Sylvia Osei, a young nurse who works at Korle Bu hospital outside Ghana's capital of Accra, told the BBC.

Ghana, a British colony until 1957, is today drained of educated people, according to the Lancet. Two thirds of its doctors leave in the three years after they graduate from medical schools, most of them to Britain.

Officially, Blair's Labour government in 2001 adopted an ethical code by forbidding the National Health Service (NHS) from recruiting from poor countries.

"It hasn't made any difference," Victor Dedjoe, assistant secretary of the Ghanaian medical association, said during a BMA convention in Manchester at the end of June.

"Two recruitment agencies have set up in my country enticing health workers abroad with all kind of packages," Dedjoe said.

These doctors and nurses now work in the NHS after doing a stint in the private sector, he added.

The World Health Organization says Britain has 166 doctors for every 100,000 people, compared to nine per 100,000 in Ghana. However, the recruitment trend could continue as Britain lags behind France, which has 329 doctors for 100,000 people.

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