HIV/AIDS kills off Africa's health workers
Pastor Dale Morgan
*
HIV/AIDS kills off Africa's health workers*
Aids deaths outnumber the so-called brain drain
More African health staff are being lost to Aids than are being enticed
to work abroad, a study says.
The death rate in Zambia's Lusaka and Kasama districts is double the
number who applied to work in the UK - the so-called brain-drain, the
Lancet said.
Researchers from Boston University in the US found that the average age
of death from Aids was just 38.
Experts said the major problem was that people with HIV struggled to get
access to antiretroviral drugs.
It is time to put more effort into keeping HIV-positive professionals
alive and serving in national institutions
Frank Feeley, report author
Report author Frank Feeley, from the university's international health
and development centre, said: "Policymakers might be tempted to focus on
stopping emigration as the best strategy to strengthen the African civil
service.
"Undoubtedly, the pay of health professionals is low and the burden of
disease in the population makes the job difficult. But the dead do not
complain about conditions of service.
"It is time to put more effort into keeping HIV-positive professionals
alive and serving in national institutions."
His research showed that there was an annual death rate of 3.5% for
nurses and 2.8% for clinical officers - medical assistants - in the
Lusaka and Kasama districts.
If this was applied to all the nurses in the country it would mean the
number of deaths in a year - 298 - would be nearly double the number
applying for registration in the UK - 169.
Therapy
He said the low average age of death suggested that "Aids rather than
diseases of advancing age is responsible for most of the deaths".
And he called on governments to make antiretroviral therapy more available.
"Stopping the brain drain requires an unprecedented level of co-operation.
"Keeping HIV-positive professionals alive and at work in their home
countries is a simpler task and one that we know how to do."
A spokeswoman for the Terrence Higgins Trust charity said: "HIV affects
all levels of society - the medical profession is no different.
"We know that the health workforce is losing workers and this is partly
because of a lack of access to drug treatment which can keep people working.
"This has the added problem that there is then less professionals to
look after the sick. Action is needed."