BOSTON: Doctors from the world’s poorest countries are leaving in droves to pursue jobs in richer nations, draining much of the developing world of critical medical care, a study showed.

Seventy-five per cent of all international medical graduates in Britain come from poorer countries, researchers at George Washington University found.

The rate was 60 per cent in the United States, 43 per cent in Canada and 40 per cent in Australia, the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine said.

“The movement of physicians from poor to rich countries is a growing obstacle to global health,” said Journal editorial written by Lincoln Chen of Harvard University and Jo Ivey Boufford of New York University.

International medical graduates make up 23 to 28 per cent of doctors in wealthy countries, and 40 to 75 per cent of those physicians come from lower-income nations, the study led by researcher Fitzhugh Mullan found.

“Nine of the 20 countries with the highest emigration factors are in sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean,” he said.

The doctors are lured by high salaries offered in developed countries, which are themselves facing shortages of medical staff and are also draining poorer countries of nurses and other skilled medical workers.—Reuters