NAIROBI: In a dimly lit ward at Nairobi’s Kenyatta Hospital, Florence explains why she has lost heart in what was once a revered profession. Shutting the door on fretting relatives who wander the corridor with steaming pots of porridge for the sick, she says it was all so different when she qualified 20 years ago.
“We really felt appreciated then,” says the matronly figure in a neatly starched white cap and navy blue dress. “Now, I always tell my daughters nursing is not the best. Pay is not good and the patients are many.”
With an average wage of less than $275 a month, many nurses rely on loans or their spouses’ incomes to pay the bills. Others take on a second job or have a hand in small businesses.
This kind of hand-to-mouth existence is driving more Kenyan nurses to seek work in under-staffed hospitals and nursing homes in Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
Kenya has lost 3,390 of its brightest nurses to rich nations over the past five years, frustrating the fight against HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis — Africa’s biggest killers.
It’s just one piece of a bigger picture. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says up to 20,000 highly qualified nurses and doctors are deserting the world’s poorest continent every year. Many African nurses find a better life working for the lucrative private sector in the West, where they can easily earn 10 times more than if they stayed, but there are hurdles.
In Britain, for example, the government has tightened a code of practice to stop nurses being filched from the poorest countries, but many still slip through the net.
Poached by rogue agencies, some are trapped, forced to hand over their earnings to pay back extortionate recruitment fees.
But the scare stories have not stopped the steady flight of nurses from Kenya, at a time when the country needs them most.
The onslaught of HIV/Aids, which infected one in 10 Kenyans in the late 1990s, means more patients and another burden for an already precarious health-care system.
“As much as I want to stay in Kenya I would go to the UK tomorrow. There are quite a number of nurses who are really dying to go there,” said Florence, 42, who did not give her real name because she was afraid her job might be at risk.
Nancy Itotia, 51, is one of the thousands who did leave. Now she works in a nursing home in Oxfordshire in central England, saving to open a clinic for mothers and children in rural Kenya.
Like many who move overseas, Itotia had a rough start.
Homesick and lonely, many nurses must pay the equivalent of 10 months’ wages for the privilege of going abroad and being taught basic skills before they can register for work.
“It felt demeaning. You are underestimated. And even in employment, you are not employed like you have any experience,” said Itotia, who paid 1,250 pounds ($2,200) to an agency to bring her to England and register her for the necessary courses.
Itotia quit Kenya because she felt under pressure to retire. It was so cold when she first landed in Britain that she walked about with two hot water bottles strapped to her chest and back.
“There is no rest in this country because you have to work to meet your bills and everything is so expensive. I would not like to get old here,” she said.
But the money is good, she said, adding she had no regrets.
“It wouldn’t help if I remained in Kenya. I wouldn’t be talking like I could start my own clinic,” she said.
The “brain drain” deals a double blow to Africa. Governments pay to train many of those who leave, reaping little return.
As expertise diminishes in Africa, demand for its most skilled people is growing. The WHO estimates that by 2008 Britain will need 25,000 doctors and 250,000 nurses more than it did in 1997, while 1 million nurses will be needed over the next decade to meet the projected shortfall in the U.S.
The United Nations Population Fund said in a report last year that migration meant poorer countries were “subsidizing” wealthier nations’ health-care systems.—Reuters
