Assuming our global responsibility: improving working conditions for health care workers globally
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/294/264

Annalee Yassi, Elizabeth Bryce, Jerry Spiegel

Health care systems worldwide continue to be plagued by difficulties in recruiting and retaining health workers, resulting in a shortage of health human resources that is now considered a global crisis.1,2

However, although the gap between the need for health care workers and the supply is experienced globally, it widens disproportionately, so that the regions with the greatest need have the fewest workers: sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia together have 53% of the global disease burden but only 15% of the world’s health care workforce.3

Moreover, the shortage experienced by countries that can least afford it is exacerbated by health worker migration to high-income countries. South Africa, for example, has fewer than 7 doctors per 10 000 people, but reported in 2002 that 14% of the physicians who had trained there
had emigrated to the US or to Canada.4 And the problem is not going away:5 in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, 23% to 28% of all physicians are international graduates.6

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http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/294/264