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Study: Poor Nations Lose Doctors to Rich

Posted on: Thursday, 27 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Alicia Chang THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

One of every four doctors in North America, Britain and Australia is an immigrant who attended a foreign medical school, contributing to a "brain drain" that deprives poor countries of good medical care, researchers say.

As many as three-quarters of physicians who come to rich countries hail from less-developed ones grappling with AIDS, infectious diseases and other health scourges, the study found. In the United States, for example, most foreign doctors are from India, the Philippines and Pakistan.

The study comes on the heels of a World Bank report this week documenting the mass migration of middle-class professionals from impoverished nations in the Caribbean, Africa and Central America.

"The brain drain has also weakened the physician work forces of many poor nations," wrote Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan, a professor of medicine and health policy at George Washington University, who led the study published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

The foreign doctors typically come to the U.S. and other rich countries to complete their residencies -- the post-medical school training period -- and many stay on to practice medicine.

Because of the aging of the baby boom generation, experts say the United States faces a shortage of 200,000 doctors and 800,000 nurses by 2020. To deal with the problem, the Association of American Medical Colleges is asking the nation's 125 medical schools to increase their enrollment.

The number of first-year medical students in the United States is already at an all-time high of about 17,000.

Source: Daily Breeze

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