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patterns of emigration among the four groups of countries. It has been observed that
given the wage benefit, physicians from all MENA countries could be moving to practice
in the Other European Countries (OEC). Besides this, Medical doctors from ECE
Countries could move to practice in the Other European Countries and the ECE
physicians could be moving to practice in all MENA countries except Egypt, Yemen and
Algeria.
Given that emphasis has been made on the role of medical education in the emigration
decision of physicians, the cost of medical education has been considered in this chapter
as an important element in the emigration reasoning. It has been observed that the Other
European Countries have the highest education costs in average when considering all
groups except the Other MENA Countries (because of their special context). The ECE
and the MENA countries have approximately comparable tuition fees with some
exceptions such as Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. These observations confirm the pattern
of emigration defined above. For example, a MENA student can seek medical education
in an ECE Country and then emigrate to one of the Other European Countries to practice
medicine.
However, the effect of the increasing high costs of medical education can have reverse
effects on the affordability of medical education to good applicants from poor families.
Providing medical education for wealthier students increases their chances of emigration
to wealthier countries and leaving the developing country of origin in shortage of skilled
medical doctors and in public health crisis. Increased costs of medical education can also
create long-term indebtedness for medical students. The elevated cost of medical
education represents a major problem that is in search for applicable strategies and
solutions as to help extract the benefits from the increased emigration of medical doctors.
This evidence leads to future studies on the role of medical schools, governments and the
public sector in ensuring the optimal number and quality of medical doctors.
I.3 Understanding the Economics of Migration of Medical Doctors in
the Context of the EU
The objective of this sub-part is to analyze the mobility of health professionals, in
particular medical doctors in the context of the European Union (EU) to address some
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