Muhimbili sickle cell specialist doctors address patients during a
recent clinic for children. Specialists are located in cities and major
towns.
Dar/Moshi/Mwanza.Tanzania spends between $40,000 (Sh66million) and $60,000 (Sh99million) to train a single medical doctor, but four out of every ten who finally graduate soon abandon their calling to pursue less exacting or better paying undertakings.
The cost of producing a medical doctor doubles if one goes for training abroad, especially in Europe and the US where medical education is still very expensive.
A recent study has revealed that slightly over 40 per cent of doctors who graduate in Tanzania ditch their profession in search of greener pastures. This is not about the infamous brain drain, whereby individuals trained at the expense of the taxpayer in a poor nation like Tanzania leave the country and go and serve abroad for better pay. Tanzania and other sub-Saharan African countries are amongst the countries that are worst hit by brain-drain, subjecting it to a massive economic loss, a new study shows.
According to a research by Canadian scientists in 2011, in nine African countries, Tanzania included, taxpayers are losing the equivalent of US$2 billion per year as their expensively trained healthcare professionals leave to seek jobs in wealthier countries.
The trend of doctors abandoning their profession is among the key factors that lead to shortage of doctors in the country, stifling efforts to improve the health sector, a report by civil society organisation indicates.
The revelations come amid a growing concern over the trend in which patients are routinely being flown abroad for treatment.
A survey conducted this year by a health NGO, Sikika, and the Medical Association of Tanzania (MAT), indicates that in addition to the abandonment of the profession by over 40 per cent of graduate doctors, a further 42 per cent are of the graduates chose to stay in major urban areas such as Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza, Mbeya and Moshi.
“Dar es Salaam alone accounts for 32 per cent of all tracked medical doctors in the country,” Irenei Kiria, executive director of Sikika said at the weekend in a statement, quoting the report in Dar es Salaam.
Tanzania has a one of the world’s poorest doctor:patient ratio, with one doctor serving about 26,000 patients. The WHO recommended ratio is 1:1,000.
Generally about 60 per cent of all medical experts trained locally turn down job offers and leave the country to seek better paying hospitals and other health facilities outside the country, according to Kilimanjaro Medical University College Principal, Prof Egbert Kessy.
The two factors – brain drain and quitting the profession – explain why the country continues to face a shortage of medical experts despite an increase in their training institutions, according to Prof Kessy.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony at the weekend in Moshi, the don called on the government to improve the remunerations of the doctors in order to attract more experts.Source the Citizen
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