African Countries: Rich Countries

Doctors Dept: How bountiful are they? Canada alone has saved about $400-million while African countries have forfeited billions in lost doctors. The four highly developed countries together have saved $4.5-billion in education costs by recruiting doctors from the nine African countries included in the study, while the nine have lost at least $2.2-billion and perhaps as much as $13.5-billion. Since most African countries spend between 30 and 200 times less per capita on health care than most rich countries, that s really awful thoughtful of them, according to Globe and Mail. At the same time, we cry crocodile tears about Africa s great need for capacity-building. There s not a single African country that doesn t face a stark scarcity of properly trained manpower to do everything from running government more efficiently though I m not sure how many rich countries have much to teach in that respect to planning cities or in this respect to implementing better sanitation and water facilities to providing dental care. readers will know what I m referring to. An editorial and a major story by Geoffrey York, the paper s Africa correspondent, have drawn attention to a new study that tallies the costs and benefits to Canada, Britain, the United States and Australia of all the African doctors they recruit. As always, we in the rich world owe a huge debt to Africa. As I documented in my book The Betrayal of Africa , in countless ways they re the world s real aid donors and we re the lucky recipients. Of course there are many other African countries magnanimously supplying doctors to other rich countries as well, not least to France, home to many thousands of doctors from francophone Africa. So the figures cited here are just a fraction of the total. Nor is it only doctors. In the health field, it s indispensable nurses by the score. And then there are all the other African professionals who emigrate to the rich world if they can. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.