[afro-nets] Africa losing nurses to Britain (10)

[Dr. S K Sharif <sksharif@ikenya.com>]

Africa losing nurses to Britain (10)
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There is a lot of debate of Africa loosing nurses to Britain and
how this has affected health services in Africa. However this is
not really an issue in Kenya. It is not the nurses migrating to
Britain which is causing a nursing crisis in Kenya. There are
enough nursing schools in Kenya to cater for the country's
needs. The training for nurses is carried in government institu-
tions, mission hospitals, private hospitals and other non profit
hospitals and organizations. However there is a shortage of
nurses in public hospitals. This shortage is due to the fact
that the government has not employed all the nurses who have
graduated from the nursing colleges due to lack of adequate
funding and a lot of nurses posted to remote areas do not take
up the jobs because the pay is low.

Thus we have a situation where there are qualified nurses who
cannot be employed by the public sector and yet there is a
shortage in public hospitals. A large number of mission hospi-
tals are facing a financial crisis and cannot employ the nurses
as per the workload thus a shortage of nurses in mission hospi-
tals.

Instead of putting restrictions on nurses and blaming the West,
let the African governments correct the fundamental issues and
that is to pay nurses a decent wage and employ all the nurses
qualifying from the nursing colleges.

Dr S K Sharif
Kenya
mailto:sksharif@ikenya.com