The Case for a Continental Medical School in Africa
by Africa is the biggest donor of health-care professionals to developed countries in the world. This is a deplorable situation that has resulted into brain drain whilst Africa’s populations do not have enough of such personnel in the health sector. This article, explores the need for an integrated approach to the training of health-care professional in the continent by way of concerted efforts.
New technological advancements of the 21st Century have been crucial to areas of collaborative research, especially in the field of medicine and personnel training the world over. Breakthoughs in on-line reasearch and other visual teaching and reseach aids have cohesed the community of scientists than ever.
But, whereas, this is equally good news to the state of the healthcare system in Africa, the level of development in the training of medics and other healthcare personnel, is till nothing in comparison to the rest of the world. Yet, Africa, has the most dire need for medica staff and facilities to respond to its millions of populations ravaged by disease, especially HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis, cancer and other infant infections. Because medical education remain at costs too high, Africa has fewer medical specialists than the need for medical attention can rely on. And a number of Africa’s highly skilled medics are practicing away from home where the lure for better terms and room for more research in the West has been the incentive. Statistics, also indicate that Africans spend a lot more money in medical training abroad than in any other discipline, yet those attaining the needed skills hardly return to render services to the struggling populations.
Besides private individuals, governments spend huge sums of taxpayers’ money to further the skills of their personnel, 50 percent of whom, quit public service upon receiving that training. Whereas such training blends well with the new demands of healthcare, the returns are below commensurate and eventually, it is a huge loss on the part of these governments that continueto rely on donor funds. It is also alarming that despite this huge demand for continous training of personnel and medical research and collaboration, not a single fully-fledged state-of-the –art facility exists in Africa. All the developing countries of Africa, have had to send students and medical personnel alike for education in Europe and the United States, furthering their losses when such individuals fail to return.
Looking at the sum total of the monies and the personnel loss with regard to foreign education, one wonders whether there could be a stop-gap meausre, or in other words, long term solutions that reduces costs and improves healthcare in terms of imparting neo-skills to all medical personnel and retaining their practice in Africa. Cynically, one would look at it from the point of having your cake and eating it. Is it? No, Africa, like in all spheres of its socio-economic struggles, has the capacity to mitigate health-care delivery systems by ensuring the quality of all healthcare personnel at the most minimum of monies involved. And African governments can certainly agree on this without being seen to strike any compromise on the quality of healthcare with regard to training of medicare personnel. If governments cared enough to look at the long-term losses in terms of all that is involved with the training and re-traing of medical personnel, then precautionary wisdom, would suggest a re-evaluation that also proposes a collective approach to the nature of medical training in Africa. That is, governments will no longer be seen as enemies, but, rather partners in causes with non-profit organisations and even private academies to insure the availability of modern medical training at average costs that Africans can afford without the nightmare of trans-continental sojourns.
Liked it
