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Table III.1.11: Physicians migrating from Portuguese speaking countries to
Portugal
Source Country Number of Physicians
in Portugal in Source Country
Angola 820 961
Guinea-Bissau 358 197
Sao Tome and Principe 238 67
Cape Verde 231 71
Source: Stilwell et al., 2004
Berliner and Ginzberg (2003) and Marchal & Kegels, (2003) also mention as pull
features factors that favor that have increased the need for medical doctors supply, among
others the advances in the medical field and medical technology and the appearance of
new diseases. This surge in the demand for doctors, and for health workforce, in general,
has not been met with an increase on the supply side. In most OECD countries, the
number of students applying for medical college has witneses a noticeable decrease. For
example, in Charlatan (2000) finds that the number of applications in medical schools in
the States has dropped from 46,968 students in 1996 to 37,137 in the year 2000.
One other major pull factor is the legal framework set up by developed countries to ease
up mobility constraints on health care workers. Australia and New Zealand, for their part,
have set a point system for immigration that positively favors health professionals. In
United States, for example, students with a J-1 visa can see their 2-yest residency back
home waived if they agree to serve for at least 3 years in an under-served area. The UK
has extensively exploited bilateral agreements and memoranda with non-OECD countries
to recruit doctors and nurses. It has for example, signed agreements with India, South
Africa, and China.
It is finally worth mentioning that a recent study by the WHO (2011) focusing on
“Governance for health in the 21st century: a study conducted for the WHO Regional
Office for Europe” is focusing on the main pillars that need to be considered in governing
health. In this study, ‘governance for health’ is “defined as the attempts of governments
or other actors to steer communities, countries or groups of countries in the pursuit of
! *)*!