Rich Nations Responsible For Shortage of Doctors?

Posted by Prudence on July 23, 2007 · Leave a Comment

For now, I’d like to post an article I found in International Herald Tribune, published last July 20.

I want you, readers, to digest and fully grasp what this news article is trying to say because I think you can glean much about the current situation of healthcare in the country. And based on this, I fear that we’re still going to be on a downhill for a while longer.

I will post a more detailed reaction about this next time.

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Developed nations draining poor countries of doctors
The Associated Press
Friday, July 20, 2007

WEST POINT, Mississippi: It took primitive conditions at a government hospital to end Dr. Minerva Rasalan’s dream of helping the poor in her native Philippines and send her on a mission toward permanent residency and practice in the United States.

During her time at the underfunded hospital, she found pregnant women assigned two to a cot, patients lining the halls and gloves and needles being sterilized for reuse. Without respirators, relatives sometimes were forced to manually bag their loved ones to keep them alive.

“It’s sad, especially for the pediatric patients who we know how to treat their diseases and most of these are infectious diseases,” said Rasalan. “We know what antibiotics to use, but we don’t have them. So, then we lose the patient.”

Rasalan is among thousands of foreign-born doctors working across the U.S. under special visas that allow them to practice in underserved rural and inner-city areas with the promise of eventual permanent residency. But critics argue the so-called “brain drain” of doctors leaving for work in the U.S. has further strained already faltering health care systems in the developing world.

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