Factors Affecting Health Workforce's Migration

3. Motivational factors for health workforce’s migration: There are many factors motivating Health workforces’ migration called pull and push factors. Push factors refer to the existing internal factors in the origin countries which drives the healthcare workers to migrate to better place for working (Cole 2017).These factors include economic factors such as poverty and few job and career opportunities. Furthermore, political factors such as political instability, poor policies and corrupted governance might make healthcare workers victims of the prevailing political circumstances (Tam et al. 2016). Finally, environmental factors which include threatening physical conditions such as frequent floods, drought and lack of water, and …show more content…
Global migration of health professionals is an equation of two sides involving source and receiving countries. There are costs and benefits to the economy on both sides (Buchan et al 2002). The cost outweigh the benefits in source countries. First negative impact in low income nations is the loss of training investment. Low-income countries are losing substantial investment in health workers migrants’ education and training greater than what wealthier countries invest. Migration of health workforce costing-Sub Saharan Africa approximately $2.17 billion USD annually (Mills et al 2011). Kerigia et al (2006) estimated in a study conducted in Kenya in 2006 the cost of migration of a single physician was nearly $66,000 USD invested in education from primary school until graduation from medical school .In addition the estimated loss of investment returns from each doctor working in the destination countries was over $517,000 USD. Second impact is the wasted investment of the existing healthcare services such as discontinuing health services due to lack of service providers (Martineau et al 2002). As an example for this impact what happened in South Africa in 2000 when spinal injuries centre closed because the two anaesthetist who were working in the centre were recruited in the same day by Canada (Martineau et al 2002). Third negative impact is work duplication and resources drain as consequences of the loss of the collective knowledges and trained experiences of the skilled migrants (institutional memory). Some economists claimed remittances are the potential benefit to balance any negative health workforce migration-related losses (Michael 2011). The word bank (2011) African countries’ receiving the highest amount of remittances worldwide, Kenya is first 1.8 billion $ and South Africa is second 1