Health+Care+Workers+Neg+-+UK+CP

Text: The UK should ¬ Insert Plantext

Observation one: competition 1. We compete through the net benefits of politics and spending

Observation two: theory 1. CP is non-topical – using the UK is not within the resolution 2. We get all non-topical CP Ground

Observation three: Solvency

1. UK is set up to solve the health care worker shortage Robert Eastwood, University of Sussex, 6-3-05, The Lancet, Volume 365, Issue 9474

Evidence is emerging about the factors that affect the retention, migration, and return of health professionals in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, much of which is contained in reports sponsored by DfID.27 The UK is well-placed to advise and assist in strengthening measures encouraging health professionals to stay in or return to their original countries. The costs to the UK are likely to compare very favourably with those that would have been incurred in the training of doctors in the UK, had there not been such immigration of health workers. We suggest that new resources be made available to DfID for the creation of bilateral ring-fenced funds for the African countries most severely affected by loss of their health professionals to the UK. These funds would be directed towards specific measures agreed with each country to assist in recruitment and retention of health professionals, especially in rural areas (eg, assistance with imaginative housing and transport incentives), and to improve in-country postgraduate training programmes. Very recently, DfID has announced an encouraging “first step in Britain's pledge to increase aid to Africa in 2005”.28 A 6-year £100 million programme of support to the health service in Malawi (ranked 198 out of 198 countries listed by WHO, with 1·13 doctors per 100 000 population7) will include investment in “better training and higher salaries for doctors, nurses and other health workers”. If this initiative can be made effective and is replicated elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa by the UK and other donors, it could help to reduce the rate of migration of health workers.