Healthcare in Africa: Lesotho’s Youth Struggle to Survive

I live in a US town of around 80,000 people. Access to healthcare has never been a major issue here. We have 30 pediatricians serving the 15,000 youth in the area. On the other hand, in the small African nation of Lesotho, there are only six pediatricians to care for the country’s 800,000 children. HIV/AIDS has been declared a national emergency in the country: one in four people have contracted the virus. Why are physicians in such short supply in a nation with such a dire need for healthcare?

Lesotho is yet another victim of an expanding skills drain in Sub-Saharan Africa. Promising students often leave the country and once educated, flee to surrounding nations to work in a more stable, higher-paying environment. A similar situation plagues other Sub-Saharan African countries such as Ghana, where in 2000, over 500 medical professionals left the country, while less than half of that number were trained the same year. It is estimated that a mere 3% of the world's physicians are being overwhelmed by 24% of the planet’s sick in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the wake of this extended skills drain, the World Health Organization has speculated that the region faces a shortage of nearly 800,000 trained physicians, accompanied by a shortage of 1.5 million general trained health staff.

It is not as if the international community has not offered assistance. Numerous NGOs have sent medical staff and professionals for stints of time. However, nothing permanent seems to work when addressing Lesotho's healthcare policies. The country's healthcare clinics are overcrowded with families in need of care. When Canadian NGOs arrived at a clinic in the city of Leribe, there were two healthcare professionals – one HIV positive – to serve the entire city. Unfortunately, this tale is all too familiar in cities and villages throughout the country.