Luring Doctors and Nurses ‘A Crime’

Rich countries are poaching so many African health workers that the practice should be viewed as a crime, a team of international disease experts say in the British medical journal The Lancet. More than 13,000 doctors trained in sub-Saharan Africa are now practicing in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia, leaving behind colleagues with impossible caseloads. African nurses and pharmacists are also sought after by clinics and drug store chains offering better pay and legal assistance with immigration, said the experts, who include the heads of several pharmacy and medicine schools in Africa. “The resulting dilapidation of health infrastructure contributes to a measurable and foreseeable public health crisis,” the article said. “The practice should therefore be viewed as an international crime.”

Wow. What do you think?

I think the idea of giving African nurses better options for employment, and opportunities to create better lives for themselves and their families is the furthest thing from a crime imaginable. Nurses are not property of the state, they do not "owe" their home countries a lifetime of devoted service. Nurses are human beings, and despite our commitment to the welfare of others, we are ENTITLED to attend to our own interests.

There is no such thing as absolute selflessness. True altruism requires enlightened self interest to balance the generosity of the act, and to maintain its continuity and value.

Many of my students are African refugees. Some of them survived unimaginable horrors to get to the United States. I can't blame any nurse there for wanting to move somewhere else. If poor nations want to keep their nurses, then they need to provide a society that values the nurses as human beings (many of these African countries demean women), and values them for their contributions to society by rewarding them with safe places to live and work, and fair compensation for their work. But many of these governments are more interested in draining the treasury than building a future for their citizens.