At the end of last week, I posted excepts from a BBC News article about the high percentage of African doctors moving to more-developed countries. The piece cited a new study by Michael Clemons of the Center for Global Development (CGD).

A couple days ago, Dr. Clemons wrote a comment on the post, saying that he thinks the mainstream media misinterpreted the results of his study.

Dr. Clemons’ comment on my post :

“I wrote the study in question and I think the BBC piece just got it wrong. I explain why here:
http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2008/01/media_reports_on_african_brain_1.php

Also- a useful summary of his research from the CGD site:

“Conventional wisdom says that, because low-income countries need skilled professionals to develop, their migration to better-paying countries is unequivocally bad… So the recent surge in the international mass migration of highly skilled workers has many worrying: will the loss of skilled professionals stymie development?

In this new working paper, CGD research fellow Michael Clemens uses new data on African health worker migration to test whether decreases in emigration raise the number of domestic health professionals, increase the mass availability of basic primary care, or improve a range of public health outcomes.

The results suggest that Africa’s generally low staffing levels and poor public health conditions are the result of factors entirely unrelated to international movements of health professionals, and that the option to emigrate has positively affected Africans’ decisions to enter the health field.

Bottom line: impeding the migration of skilled health professionals, by sending and receiving countries, does little to improve health systems or heath outcomes in Africa.”

I whole heartily thank Dr. Clemons for leaving his comment on the 14th, and hope he may accept my invitation to post on the ONE Blog in the future? We’d love to have your insights.

-Virginia Simmons