Brain drain impacts on national AIDS programme

Botswana's public health system lacks a sufficient number of trained workers to staff its HIV/AIDS programmes, the country's President Festus Mogae has said. This was largely because workers were attracted to more lucrative positions abroad, and the higher salaries offered by non-governmental organisations operating locally, Mogae said. In a recent interview with an American newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, Mogae said the "brain drain" was the biggest obstacle to the rapid expansion of the country's treatment programmes. The staff shortage and the "slower than expected" pace of constructing clinics, laboratories and drug warehouses had delayed the expansion of the country's HIV/AIDS programmes, including a national programme to distribute antiretroviral drugs to some 110,000 people who needed them. Botswana has tried to counter the loss of staff by recruiting health professionals from India, Cuba and other African countries, but Mogae added: "We'll be lucky if we get them."