Can health worker migration become a development opportunity? | Associate Writer

Co-financing remains a key strategy for governments to leverage the expertise of international health professionals. It can strengthen skills, improve employability and support pathways that meet the needs of public services. By integrating it into national policies, countries can turn the “brain drain” into managed and useful rotating mobility for their systems.

For this mobility to be beneficial to developing countries, it must avoid any net loss of staff: limited duration and planned rotations, mechanisms for transferring skills to local teams (tutoring, supervision, peer training) and/or return or service obligations.

Migration can then be institutionalized through strategic tools:

• continental reference documents
• operational plans
• roadmaps

In Africa, the five regions (Centre, North, East, West and South) would benefit from formal memorandums of understanding based on mutual co-financing and shared performance indicators.

International development partners must support this mechanism with technical expertise, governance and impact assessment. They could also make their funding conditional on the maintenance and retention of trained teams, and secure funds to ensure sustainable health resilience.