Donors and Partners
The need
NO HEALTH WORKERS = NO TREATMENT
Africa’s greatest obstacle in public (and particularly rural) healthcare is a lack of qualified professionals. Brain drain has become endemic to the South African healthcare system, with as many as 50% of qualifying doctors emigrating each year, whilst 75% of what remains opt for the private sector. About 35% of public health posts in South Africa are vacant.
Without a solid complement of qualified professionals on board, many of our facilities remain overcrowded and underserviced. This puts extra pressure on the few staff members who are there, making public service even less attractive as a career.
Our strategy is not only to fill the staffing gaps, but also to identify all the factors that contribute to this cycle, so as to create a sustainable new reality for public health.
In this representative map, territory size shows the global proportion of all physicians (doctors) who work in that territory.
- In 2009 there were 8 million physicians working around the world. The largest number were in China, which is the largest territory on the map.
- If physicians were distributed according to population, there would be 124 physicians to every 100 000 people. 50% of the world’s physicians live in territories with less than a fifth of the world’s population. The worst‐off fifth are served by only 2% of the world’s physicians. This latter fifth of the global population lives almost entirely in sub‐Saharan Africa.
