The great healthcare robbery

To finish up here: It is incompetent and damaging on all sides to attempt to remedy our own blunders and lack of foresight on the issue of health-care worker supply, by aggravating an already-appalling deficiency in poor countries.

Burkhardt @ 12:35 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

continuing: 2. Promote more opportunities for clinical work and research in the affected countries-- with training and work carried out in the relevant local languages-- and thus provide opportunities for these physicians to better serve their communities. 3. Most of all, we need to do a better job training our own health-care workers. We are woefully deficient in nursing schools in particular, let alone medical schools, and we need to work harder to ensure that supply meets demand.

Burkhardt @ 12:35 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

continuing... And the Philippines, a country that always seems to be on the brink of climbing out of 3rd-world country status, is constantly pushed back down by the pernicious effects of spending billions to educate its health-care workforce, yet getting almost nothing in return. There's no instant solution here, but at the very least, we could take the following simple steps: 1. Compensate poor countries for the costs of training these physicians and nurses and for the loss of their skills to the affected country.

Burkhardt @ 12:34 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

continuing-- As a physician myself, I was almost blind to this problem until I began working on international health projects 4 years ago. I went to several West African countries as well as to the Philippines. These nations' health care infrastructures have been all but devastated by the loss of their desperately-needed physicians. All of the billions of dollars that the Gates Foundation and other organizations have been investing to halt the spread of HIV in Africa and India, is being wasted-- UTTERLY WASTED by the lack of trained healthcare personnel to assist in providing the necessary care.

Burkhardt @ 12:34 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

continuing-- So poor countries are just watering-down or outright closing their own medical training facilities, or else doing things like "decertifying" well-trained nurses and doctors so they're more difficult to recruit. They can't afford to spend so much training these physicians and then get nothing in return. This isn't a matter of mere "individual freedom" and "global mobility"-- it's the very survival of the health-care infrastructures of poor countries, and the very sickening effect of further widening the gap between rich and poor countries, with ever-shrinking prospects for poor countries to ever catch up.

Burkhardt @ 12:33 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

Kerry Howley, with all due respect, you don't have a clue what you're talking about here, and you fail to consider the long-term implications at work, let alone the practical consequences here. What you just don't "get," is that these already poor countries have to foot the bill for the tremendous costs of training and educating these health-care workers-- while we already-rich countries, who invest little to nothing in their training, get all the benefits.

Burkhardt @ 12:33 AM PDT, Mar 12, 2008

Howley, you're all wet on this issue. Why in the world do you think there's a shortage of doctors in the U.S. in the first place? If you are a libertarian who believes in free markets and fair competition, you should be slamming the American medical industry that uses these foreign doctors to prop up their monopoly on the provision of medical services. By focusing on only half of the equation you are serving as a lapdog for the AMA. American doctors use foreign doctors to fine-tune the supply and fill the lower-paying doctor jobs, all in an effort to maintain their system of creating barriers to entry into their business.

LCH @ 2:22 PM PDT, Mar 11, 2008

The hysteric reaction Mills and his ilk have to the prospect of individuals acting in their own self interest reflects the disconnection between crackpot "deglobalisation" theorists and economic reality. The view the Lancet allowed to be printed in their journal cheapens the individual and puts the demands of members of poorly functioning societies ahead of each individual therein. It puts the demands of certain groups ahead of individual rights. http://skyofashes.blogspot.com/

Kevin @ 2:03 PM PDT, Mar 10, 2008

Those working overseas have increased the prospects of better quality healthcare than hindering it. To succeed in prosecuting the recruiters, you should start by telling us what we should do with the excess staff, the under resourced institutions and the under-employed graduates. You should stop the healthcare workers leaving their rural homes and villages for cities and more economically developed areas within the same countries. You should seek a way to stupidfy the Africans such that they are not aware of any better life and opportunities outside their countries… maybe... you will have a better opportunity to stop the recruiters.

G Kamau @ 1:01 PM PST, Mar 8, 2008

Having spent years as an aid worker in Africa, I agree with the authors of the Lancet commentary. The view of the op-ed don't reflect what is actually in the Lancet piece so it is very misleading. What the authors of the piece are actually saying is that if we, the wealthy countries, can benefit so much from recruiting health workers from Africa, then we should also assist in education in those countries. It seems entirely reasonable.

Rennie @ 11:24 AM PST, Mar 8, 2008

Next