The government plans to create a residence permit for medical professionals in order to facilitate the installation of foreign doctors in France and to improve its “attractiveness”. At the risk of aggravating the bleeding in countries with already fragile health systems.
dr Mamadou Demba Ndour alerts that he may have to stop talking. This doctor is the only obstetrician and gynecologist at the Matam Regional Hospital, 600 kilometers from Dakar. With more than 1,000 deliveries a year, your phone can ring day and night. And his situation is nothing special. “As soon as we move away from the big cities, we find entire regions where the need for medical staff is not met,” explains the specialist, who is also Secretary General of the Autonomous Association of Senegalese Doctors (SAMES).
Low wages, an enormous workload, a technical platform that is “light years away from what is being done in Europe”… “Working in a public hospital in Senegal is a priesthood,” admits the forty-year-old. The working conditions are extremely difficult.” So some go private. And others are leaving the country for milder skies and health systems. “Many go abroad for a specialization and don’t return,” he says.
The lack of data makes it impossible to assess the extent of this emigration to Senegal, but we know that, due to the history of colonization, France is one of the preferred destinations for these professionals. But the country is not an isolated case. Doctors who studied in French-speaking Africa represent the second contingent of doctors with foreign diplomas (outside the European Union) practicing in France, behind those from the Maghreb.