NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Every two days, at least one doctor heads to the airport of a poor African country and flies off to work in Europe or America. Up to 2000 doctors have left in the last 10 years; leaving Africa with the highest disease burden in the world and the lowest number of health workers.

Now, universities in 12 African countries have come together to try to stop prospective health workers fleeing as soon as they graduate. Grouped under the Medical Education Partnership Initiative, the universities want to offer the health workers pre-graduation conditions similar to what is available in the developed world.

The universities want to give them better education, better opportunities to do research, and better technology and infrastructure to ease their training and work.