Sam (and Cary :)),
African nurse situation is rather different from all other places I am aware off. East Europe, India, etc. may grumble a bit about brain drain, but actually they mostly benefit from it. People who study in home country and then emigrate raise the image of the country through high qualification services abroad, they bring income back (this is also true for Malawi - mentioned in the article!), they return with more experience and ideas to start their own business. Also the local schools and universities raise their profile and can produce more high qualification specialists. So it's all mostly beneficial to the host country, although there is always a bit of cost in terms of publicly funded education and lost workforce.
Now, in Africa they claim that countries are spending more public money for training people than they are getting back from people's services. And if people emigrate country needs to spend more money again. It is not obvious that this is really the correct issue to handle - there are probably more significant issues, for example, political and economical situation are probably forcing much more people to leave than what would happen just because of the wage difference. But let's assume, this is one issue to solve. How to solve it? Prohibit migration from Malawi/African side? From UK/USA side?
In my opinion, UK/USA cannot do much, since they are not qualified to evaluate each and single country and applicant: did they pay for their studies? were they needed at their country?
Malawi/Africa can probably do much more. Either in command/control approach, like Cary mentioned, a civil/military draft for limited period of time. Or in some kind of intelligent capitalist way: long-term contracts for better salary/benefits? Find out what these nurses WANT (school for their children? food? electricity?) and give increase this with a long-term contract. This seems to be the most workable way.
Just rambling
Jurgis |
