Bibliography

This article, presented in the form of a blog, provides the author’s views on an article published by Mills et al 2011 on health worker migration in the British Medical Journal. The author describes the article as a back-of-the-envelope calculation, suggesting that the emigration of physicians from Africa cost the continent billions of dollars and saved billions for the countries of destination. The author describes how he shares and appreciates the authors’ concern for strengthening health care systems in Africa, but that the numbers they calculate are deeply flawed, and their unfortunate arithmetic should be ignored by policymakers. The author expresses his concern for the unscientific analysis in a respected scientific forum like the British Medical Journal, and proceeds to discuss in detail the reasons for his thinking.