Health Worker Migration: Disease or Symptom?
Michael A. Clemens
Do health workers who leave developing countries, and the organizations that hire them, cause death? Enormous concern has arisen around this issue. Many analysts assert that health worker migration from poor countries kills large numbers of people. If this is true, others reason, the international recruitment of African health workers is an atrocity, a crime against humanity.
We should take these claims seriously. If health worker migration by itself were a substantial cause of death, then stopping health worker migration - by itself - would save lives. Allowing it would have plain ethical implications. Measures that have been proposed to limit health worker migration include restrictions on the international recruitment of health workers, and promoting health worker self-sufficiency in destination countries. Such measures are coercive; they work to interrupt health workers' ability to find jobs abroad, without those workers' permission.
