Iam a professional nurse with a postgraduate degree and a single mother. Iam From Malawi but choose to migrate because of moral principles, and personal reasons.Iam thankful that my government invested alot towards my nurse education. On the other hand i feel i gave back to my country using the meagre resources until i found out what was ideal. I dont think in this day and age hospitals should be nursing two children or patients in one bed just to site one example.Privacy and dignity are basic human rights.
As a single mother i could not afford to pay for decent education for my son because i had lost confidence in the public schools which i attended when i was his age, with great pride. Everytime i go back home my heart breaks. The gap between the poor and the rich is very wide. I hope and pray that my homeland will one day be healed and make life bearable for those who are less fortunate. If most of us cannot see ourselves admitted to a goverment hospital in Malawi,nor earn the meagre salary the Malawian nurse gets, what makes us think it is alright for somebody else? If we can all put ourselves in the shoes of our brothers and sisters who cannot afford the basic neccessities maybe that could be a step forward but that can not be achieved by words alone or by a lone crusader. My heart goes to my brothers and sisters back in Malawi and emotions will not solve their problems. God help Malawi and grant the leaders wisdom and a heart for their people.

I agree the situation is not good at all in MALAWI. The factors are complex and I think some them have been contributed by the western countries.

I am a bit cautious though also as a journalist on how the selection of the hospital, the soundbites and the doctor may have been selected. Beyond this documentary, there could have been other motives.

Anyhow I am happy this has been shown to many others whom I hope will be concerned and do something about at the situation.

I watched Malawi Brain Drain on CNN today, all i can say is that each one of us has the right to basic needs including those nurses and doctors. We should put ourselves in their shoes.None of us would want our children or ourselves in those situations, so lets get real and stop blaming the people who left the country, they did not create the mess. Malawi is a very beautiful country, the people are hardworking and God fearing all they need is encouragement, support and guidance. Why is it all of a sudden there is this problem with brain drain? Lets get real. I hope this will be posted.

I wouldnt call it a BRAIN DRAIN,more appropriately its a BRAIN SHIFT.A facility without medicines and equipment of any form should not operate and therefore it follows that such hospitals dont need doctors.They are more slaughterhouses than hospitals.Properly trained 'BRAINS' shift away from such conditions first to cause no further harm and secondly for their own safety.i would very much like to sympathise with my motherland Africa but i find it very hard when i know that political leaders upgrade their mansions annually and annually they buy mercedes benz limos and SUVs without even a thought of a paracetamol or a gauze bandage!Doctors shifting out of Africa are actually doing more good-which is what they were trained for!They are just a few pixels of the bigger picture!

Thank you for focusing on the health drain facing Africa. Your report left me as an African doctor who left, upset and very let down by your one-sided report designed to paint a very negative picture of us. I was trained and taught the basics but could not go further. That placed limitations on the service I could offer. Imagine you journalists being restricted to the neighborhood paper with no chance to aspire! I knew all the theory of current techniques from books and never having seen in practice. Backwardness eventually rhymes with incompetence. Although I wanted to be the best doctor I could be, I left mainly because the government could no longer afford to supply the hospitals with drugs, materials and the staff salaries paid did not allow doctors to rent apartments in town. There was no fuel to commute! When doctors are below the poverty line after a decade of study, it is rather sad! In addition to watching patients writhing in pain because of shortage of drugs, being unable to provide for our own families just rendered the situation untenable. There is nothing that prepares you for such an existence. Nevermind the fact that our extended families placed demands on us, those dependants did not go away. Migration is the reason, America came to be. It will always continue.
The role of African governments needs review here. When their self-serving systems fail everyone suffers as a result.Responsible journalism means that one looks carefully at an issue without and is non-judgemental. I am afraid you failed in this regard.

I have just watched the article and am deeply disturbed, why are we not sponsering a doctor to keep the people healthy. there are so many sponser a child adverts why not doctor's?

This article first appeared on SBS TV in Australia and I sent my views which were not acknowledged by the producers. It has appeared again on CNN and I am sending the same views I sent to SBS and Aaron Lewis.
I hope CNN will be different and will make my views public so that people may see the other side. Many thanks.


Dear

Africa’s Deadly Brain Drain

Thank you for the above programme on SBS Dateline.
I would like to make a few observations about this article which featured on your programme. I have not watched it but I have read the transcript online. I am a Malawian medical doctor who trained at the Adelaide Medical School in South Australia in the 90s. I went back to Malawi and worked for 6 years but came to UK and now in Dublin to complete specialist training with the Royal College in London.

I find the reporting negative and typical of western sensationalistic journalism to captivate the general public about African problems. It seems the reporter went to Malawi with a preconceived idea and worked hard to push it across at all cost.
Firstly, I find it difficult to understand why Aaron chose not to interview any of the local Malawian doctors based in Malawi. Was it to give an impression that all Malawian doctors have left the country? He resorted to talking to a Ugandan volunteer, Dr Ayella. I believe he did talk to Malawian doctors but chose to omit the interviews to portray an extreme picture to suit his purpose. I wondered why Aaron never wanted to find out from this Ugandan volunteer doctor why he was volunteering his services in Malawi when his own country's situation is just as bad.

Secondly, referring to Ketamine as a "horse tranquiliser" is painting a wrong picture especially for the lay people that watch this programme because they will think that people in Malawi are treated like horses. Ketamine is both an analgesic and anaethetic and is used both in human and veterinary medicine. To call ketamine a horse tranquilizer is an attempt to meet his ends. Ketamine is widely used in hospitals in a number of countries with good effect despite the side effects.

Thirdly, Aaron’s statement that “clinical officers now double as surgeons even though not trained for it” is erroneous. There has been no change in the way clinical officers work. They are not doing anything new now due to doctor shortage, as Aaron would like the general public to believe. In fact if he did his research well he could easily find out that health services in Malawi have for a long time been provided by these clinical officers who have performed great work, before the establishment of the medical school.

Aaron also spoke to Dr Makhalila who is currently in the UK pursuing specialist training and he reported that “his entire class left for better opportunities in the West”. This is far from the truth and misleading.

We do not deny that Malawi has few doctors. The Malawi College of Medicine is not old but has managed to produce a good number of doctors. Some of these doctors have since left to pursue postgraduate specialist training in other countries because there is no specialist training in Malawi. In fact Aaron contacted me and I told him that these doctors have not deserted Malawi but that they are in training to equip themselves with better knowledge and expertise. There are indeed a lot of Malawian doctors in the UK but Aaron only managed to speak to one doctor. He was looking for doctors that are in the UK to stay and he could not find them because these doctors came to the UK for training and not to stay. There is a deliberate blackout of this in the programme because it is in conflict with his views. I think Malawian doctors deserve better specialist training in the best systems of the world just like any other doctors. They deserve to be members and fellows of the Royal Colleges and the Malawian people deserve to be treated by the best-qualified doctors just like anywhere else.

I hope you would make these comments available to the general public that listened to your report to get the other side.

Many thanks
Dr Vincent Mtika, Dublin

No one is going to take notice because quite simply, the western world powers could care less about these people and the wonderful doctors trying tirelessly to help them.It would take GOD himself to intervene.

Trying to find out what time your "World's Untold Stories" comes on on CNNi - tried but in vain - reside in the East Coast - GA. Thanks....

I cannot seem to get done commenting on this BRAIN DRAIN issue because i find it very disturbing.Isnt it very ironic that Malawi grows its own cotton and the hospitals run out of gauze swabs and cotton wool? the poor farmer gets peanuts for his cotton sales.We do not have screens around our hospital beds to provide privacy, when we had David Whitehead and sons right on our door steps, the resources are there and so is the infrastructure. Am i being naive or out of touch? Something is not right. Where did it go wrong? Only God knows.

malawi brain drain is a real story that is need to be told.there are so many leaders in africa as a whole who have skills and dreams but they are afraid of showing their skills,they have chewed ,spitted and sometimes swallowed important strategies for a better life for all,and in terms of resources I believe that resources is what we have,the problem is that they are not widely distributed they only bennefit the few,that why other people just migrate for green patures "i love africa" and we can do what we can if we dont compare ourselves to others.by X.A.MAGWAZA @ 207515328@ukzn.ac.za

I agree with Mr Kawongas comments that there are alot of factors that have contributed to the brain drain, and there are alot of problems in Malawi which can only be dealt with using a multisectoral approach. What people should not forget is that the world has become a global village, people will migrate and migration is not a new phenomenon. The most powerful weapon God gave us as human beings is to remove ourselves from situations that are negative,unproductive and destructive given the resources.It is very unfortunate that it is the innocent people and the hard working folks that get affected and caught out. People need to be empowered so that they know what is ideal and what is not, in so doing they will be able to demand the services. Iam not saying that we should copy everything that the western society does NO! all iam trying to point out is that people need to know what their rights are, just to cite examples their right to privacy and dignity, their freedom to speech. How many people in Malawi know what the Malawian constitution states? It would be interesting to find out. To blame the nurses and doctors who have left the country with regards the brain drain in Malawi is something that i find very unacceptable personnally, because nobody to be honest would want to work in those conditions as shown on the programme. I personnally offered my services to my country with great pride using the meagre resources, only God noticed. Just to cite a few examples during the Phalombe disaster i was working as a registered nurse at the old Mulanje district hospital,using very little resources.The hospital had three registered nurses with one matron, i cannot remember the exact number of enrolled nurses and there were two expatriate doctors but we all worked hard. As a registered nurse you were expected to take charge of a ward soon after graduation but we never complained because we did not know any better. We were just happy to get on with our work. At that time we were getting patients from Mozambique who had stepped on landmines coming to our hospital to get their surgery done. At times we were getting an hours sleep and were expected to be back to work in the morning.I could go on and on. There are alot of heros out there who have gone before us and some are still here with us but have chosen not to tell their stories.And iam not calling myself a hero,iam far from being one, iam just making a comment on the issue at hand which can only be addressed with ,empathy and deeds and not just empty words.

so much and it is true, right? when we are having this good internet, humans around know it clear and we read. this is a bad situation. regard beautifully, some of your rich tax money and funds to manufacture medicines and supplies to malawi and poor who write softly for health. God save me too!

It`s so unfortunate that people have to suffer so much just b`cos almost all their doctors have gone to UK to equip themselves more so as to give their people the best of health care they deserve when they become specialists and all return home.One can only hope and pray that these sick and dying patients would still be alive to enjoy the dividends of the higher education their doctors claimed to have gone for.

I watched Malawi Brain Drain on CNN today, all i can say is that each one of us has the right to basic needs including those nurses and doctors. We should put ourselves in their shoes.None of us would want our children or ourselves in those situations, so lets get real and stop blaming the people who left the country, they did not create the mess. Malawi is a very beautiful country, the people are hardworking and God fearing all they need is encouragement, support and guidance. Why is it all of a sudden there is this problem with brain drain? Lets get real. I hope this will be posted.www.clothdeal.com

I am from the opposite part of the world that is the caribbean. while our living conditions maybe far better to malawi i find that evil prevails when good men/women do nothing. As I look at my own society been engulfed by drugs and guns hiv and death as a result. However i am not going to leave. I will pray but I need to put mine own shoulder to wheel. I have reverence for the true Doctor Robert Ayella his colleagues and nurses the real humanitarians.

Lack of strong Moral and Religious decipline encourages the blame/game of killing the elderly in our communities(Republic of Kenya).
There has to be a Criminal verdict for some-one to be Convicted.
Please do not take the role of what you are not trained to do.

How casn we send small amounts of medical supplies donated by locals

WE CAN'T KEEP BLAMING MALAWIAN NURSES FOR MIGRATING TO GREENER PASTURES WHAT WITH THOSE MISERABLE SALARIES!ASK THE OFFICIALS AT MINISTRY OF HEALTH WHO ARE FOREVER ATTENDING WORKSHOPS-I ONCE HAD A BOSS WHO BEHAVED LIKE THIS TO GO TO THE HOSPTITALALS AND LOOK AFTER THE PATIENTS BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHERE THEY PUT THE DONATED MONEY WHICH WAS INTENDED FOR THE NURSES. IAM NOT GOING BACK HOME TO NURSE ANYMORE I WILL RETIRE CONFORTABLY GO BACK HOME ENJOY MYSELF AND SINCE NOW I HAVE MY phD MANY BE ONCE IN A WHILE DO SOME CONSULTANCY WORK RELATING TO NURSES MIGRATION NURSE IN MALAWI OH! NO OVER MY DEAD BODY