Jonathan Zimmerman: Do African doctors have an obligation to practice in Africa? On brain drains and blame games.
[Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history at New York University, is teaching this semester at the university's study-abroad program in Accra, Ghana. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."]
ACCRA, Ghana
Several years ago, at a staid academic conference, I heard an African-American speaker inveigh bitterly against "selfish" middle-class blacks.
Once upon a time, he said, black people looked out for one another. But today's black professional classes were turning their backs on their poorer brethren, putting avarice and ambition ahead of their shared responsibility to the race.
I think of this speech whenever I hear people in Ghana bemoan the "brain drain," the exodus of educated professionals from this country.
According to a 2005 World Bank study, a whopping 47 percent of college-educated Ghanaians live abroad. The problem is especially acute in medicine, where 54 percent of physicians who trained here between 1999 and 2004 left to work elsewhere.
That's in a country with just 2,000 doctors, or one for every 11,000 inhabitants. By comparison, the United States has one doctor for every 2,000 people. Some hospitals here have no doctor at all, while others hire a single physician to care for thousands of patients.
Indeed, Ghanaians will tell you, there are more Ghanaian physicians in New York City alone than there are in Ghana. I've never been able to confirm this statistic. But people here repeat it so often that it has become part of national lore. It speaks to the larger truth of the brain drain, even if the actual number is false.
So who's at fault for this grim state of affairs? Like the African-American speaker at my conference, many Ghanaians blame their own "greedy" professionals. Ghana gave them skills, the argument goes, but they won't give back. They value their pocketbooks more than their patriotism.
Never mind that they remit millions of dollars back into Ghana, or that large numbers of overseas professionals return home. By some estimates, for example, 60 percent of Africans who go to the United States eventually come back.
No, the real question is whether any human being has a greater duty to his or her "own kind" - be it race, ethnicity or nation - than to humanity as a whole. Compared to other Americans, do middle class blacks have a special responsibility to lift inner-city African-Americans out of poverty? Do Ghanaian physicians have a higher obligation - than any other doctor, in any other nation - to treat Ghanaian patients?
I think not. The greatest humanists of history -think Schweitzer, Gandhi or King - all emphasized our shared moral duty to one another, no matter where we live. Even more, they reminded us, holding some groups to a higher duty lets the rest of us off the hook.
Black inner-city poverty? I'm not black, so it's not my concern. Too few African doctors? Tell them to stay in Africa, and everything will be O.K....
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
ACCRA, Ghana
Several years ago, at a staid academic conference, I heard an African-American speaker inveigh bitterly against "selfish" middle-class blacks.
Once upon a time, he said, black people looked out for one another. But today's black professional classes were turning their backs on their poorer brethren, putting avarice and ambition ahead of their shared responsibility to the race.
I think of this speech whenever I hear people in Ghana bemoan the "brain drain," the exodus of educated professionals from this country.
According to a 2005 World Bank study, a whopping 47 percent of college-educated Ghanaians live abroad. The problem is especially acute in medicine, where 54 percent of physicians who trained here between 1999 and 2004 left to work elsewhere.
That's in a country with just 2,000 doctors, or one for every 11,000 inhabitants. By comparison, the United States has one doctor for every 2,000 people. Some hospitals here have no doctor at all, while others hire a single physician to care for thousands of patients.
Indeed, Ghanaians will tell you, there are more Ghanaian physicians in New York City alone than there are in Ghana. I've never been able to confirm this statistic. But people here repeat it so often that it has become part of national lore. It speaks to the larger truth of the brain drain, even if the actual number is false.
So who's at fault for this grim state of affairs? Like the African-American speaker at my conference, many Ghanaians blame their own "greedy" professionals. Ghana gave them skills, the argument goes, but they won't give back. They value their pocketbooks more than their patriotism.
Never mind that they remit millions of dollars back into Ghana, or that large numbers of overseas professionals return home. By some estimates, for example, 60 percent of Africans who go to the United States eventually come back.
No, the real question is whether any human being has a greater duty to his or her "own kind" - be it race, ethnicity or nation - than to humanity as a whole. Compared to other Americans, do middle class blacks have a special responsibility to lift inner-city African-Americans out of poverty? Do Ghanaian physicians have a higher obligation - than any other doctor, in any other nation - to treat Ghanaian patients?
I think not. The greatest humanists of history -think Schweitzer, Gandhi or King - all emphasized our shared moral duty to one another, no matter where we live. Even more, they reminded us, holding some groups to a higher duty lets the rest of us off the hook.
Black inner-city poverty? I'm not black, so it's not my concern. Too few African doctors? Tell them to stay in Africa, and everything will be O.K....