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professionals, with an average of 20,000 annually (Oyowe, 1996 and table III.1.3). The
outflow of South African nurses is at least eight times the amount of the influx of nurses
into the country (Bateman, 2007) 87 .
Table III.1.3: Voluntary leavers: example of direct wastage in selected countries,
1999
Source: Dovlo D: Issues Affecting the Mobility and Retention of Health Workers/Professionals in
Commonwealth African States. A consultancy report prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat. London;
1999. In Dovlo, 2005.
Stilwell (2003) reports that the annual registrations in the UK of doctors originating from
Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe represent 1.1 per cent, 2.0 per cent, and 0.7 per cent
out the total number of registered doctors, respectively. In Ghana and “According to the
Ministry of Health, Ghana has about 13 physicians per 100,000 population (as compared
with 256 in the United States) and about 92 nurses per 100,000 (as compared with 937 in
the United States). Today, there are 532 Ghanaian doctors practicing in the United
States. Although they represent a tiny fraction of the 800,000 U.S. physicians, their
number is equivalent to 20% of Ghana’s medical capacity, for there are only 2600
physicians in Ghana. An additional 259 Ghanaian physicians are in practice in the
United Kingdom and Canada — and this group includes only those who have
successfully been licensed after leaving Ghana.” (Mullan, 2007). This takes place when
Ghana itself suffers from a grim shortage of health workers and when 7% of the
physicians in the country are from Cuba (Mullan, 2007).
Robinson & Clark (2008) state that, between 1993 and 2002, 604 doctors and about a
third of the country’s nurses left the country. Bach (2006) shows that 43% of the
87 A somewhat counter-trend study by Mukanga et al., 2010) has shown that 85 % of the graduate from field
epidemiology training programmes in Tanzania and Nigeria do remain in their countries.
! *'%!