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UK shamed for poaching African doctors
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07.19.04 (4 years ago)
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UK shamed for poaching African Aids workers
BRIAN BRADY WESTMINSTER EDITOR
BRITAIN has been named and shamed for its record of "poaching" desperately needed doctors and nurses from Aids-hit African nations.
An international Aids conference in Bangkok last week was told that the UK had become the most active recruiter of trained African health professionals in the developed world.
But human rights groups claimed the recruitment drive by private nursing homes and the NHS was helping to cripple African health chiefs struggling to cope with the Aids epidemic across the continent.
The Boston-based group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) told the conference that a shortage of qualified staff to administer drugs and treat patients is undermining the international effort to combat the condition. Thousands of doctors and nurses are lured away every year, tempted by higher salaries and better conditions in hospitals in Europe and the United States.
Ministers have been forced to tie the National Health Service to a code of conduct that prevents it recruiting directly from countries that are already suffering a shortage in trained staff, notably in sub-Saharan Africa. But aid charities have warned that the code is easy to dodge as many nurses come to the UK independently to find work, or are recruited by nursing homes, from where they can easily move into the NHS.
The UK is believed to have taken on at least 3,000 African nurses a year since Gordon Brown launched his massive NHS investment programme after Labour’s second election victory in 2001. A recent report revealed that, in 2002-3, almost half of the new nurses registering to work in Britain were from abroad, making the UK the world’s biggest recruiter of nursing staff. The number of work permits issued to nurses rose from 14,000 in 2000 to more than 27,000 last year.
Britain is also second only to the United States in the number of overseas doctors it recruits every year. The PHR report said 5,334 doctors trained in African medical schools were practising in the US in 2002. The flow of nurses and pharmacists to Europe has also risen.
Some African countries, especially Ghana and Zambia, have begun to offer new financial incentives, including subsidised mortgages and extended car loans, to keep doctors and nurses at home.
"We have to find ways of keeping health workers in their countries," said Jim Kim, director of HIV/Aids at the World Health Organisation.
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