International migration of health workers

This policy brief from the OECD provides new insights on recent migration trends for doctors and nurses up to 2008, and discusses the main causes and consequences for destination and origin countries, and presents possible policy responses.

In 2006, the World Health Organization estimated that there was a shortage of more than 4.3 million health personnel across the world. Low-income countries were particularly hard-hit by shortages: of the 57 countries with a critical shortage, 36 were sub-Saharan African countries.
There has been a debate over the effects of migration on these shortages, weighed against the individual rights of health personnel, but work jointly carried out by the OECD and WHO shows that the global health workforce crisis goes beyond the migration issue. The global economic crisis and events such as the A/H1N1 pandemic have recently increased the pressure on health systems and health personnel.