Is There any Solution to the “Brain Drain” of Health Professionals and Knowledge from Africa?
African public health care systems suffer from significant brain drain of its health care professionals and knowledge as health workers migrate to wealthier countries. In this paper, the brain drain is defined as both a loss of health workers (hard brain drain) and unavailability of research results to users in Africa (soft brain drain). In order to control or manage the outflow of vital human resources from the developing nations to the developed ones, various possible solutions have been discussed. However, the dilemma is how to balance personal autonomy, right to economic prosperity, right to personal professional development, and the expectations of the public in relation to adequate public health care services in the developing nations.
