Brain Drain or Brain on Lease (2)?   E. Ablorh-Odjidja June 11, 2011   I read a piece titled “Brain drain of health professionals from Ghana and the Health Delivery Crises” and wondered why we keep throwing up issues the solution for which requires a basic understanding that we do not care to accept?   Truth be told, there are health crises in many parts of the third world because of causes attributable to the brain drain and others.   The same crisis can be said for other fields, where needed professionals have been sucked away.   Also true is the reason stated in this piece I read, as to why these professionals leave home for foreign countries:   “The …exodus of health professionals from Ghana health sector emanates mainly from poor service conditions, with 66% of respondents indicating poor wages as the most compelling consideration for them to consider seeking opportunities abroad.” Says Prosper Yao Tsikata writer and author of “My Name, My Race: A young African’s untold story.”   What the complaint against the “brain drain” misses is the understanding that we are part of a global marketplace, where there are no barriers to needed talents and skills.  And the rewards for these are huge and highly competitive.   The above global marketplace attraction allows Essien, for instance, to play for Chelsea instead of Accra Hearts of Oak.   Most on any Black Star assembled team, each year, will be formed by a cadre of Ghanaians from the international circuit players employed abroad.    These athletes, like the doctors or other professionals, start up in Ghana and end up employed overseas.  Roughly stated, this is the face of our problem depicted by our failure to retain our trained professionals, including doctors, at home.   But the condition is not a zero-sum game.  Benefits undergird either way when and where this phenomenon happens.   Hopefully, the sports metaphor will help explain vividly the “brain drain” as opposed to the "brain on the lease" experience.    Unlike Athletes, other skills or professions are not so age-restricted.  Whereas an athlete has a limited productive life span, other professionals have useful benefits that extend further and further beyond the youthful age and into old age.   Doctors, engineers, and accountants cannot be recruited yearly from abroad or on tournament by tournaments basis to lend their talents at home, as done with our athletes.    Many of these professionals may eventually want to return to help, but they are also limited by commitments and limitations due to what they do abroad.   But the good news is, soon and finally on reaching the retirement age, they can and are more than willing to return and lend their skills to help the nation.   It is within the instance of when these professionals can return home that the scourge we now call the "brain drain" can acquire a good flip side; the “brain on the lease” aspect of things.     But first, there is a need for a paradigm shift among our people.  The "brain drain" misnomer must shift to its potential positive aspect, i.e.; the "brain on the lease." outlook.   Here we must note the difference between the athlete and the other professionals.    Both doctors and athletes are subject to the same global market pulls; this is compounded by the democratic principle that our constitution allows for free movement.  But the skills of the athlete will diminish with age, whereas the other professional will mature with age.    Regardless, those who go away also carry with them the hunger to come back home.  There is a need to encourage and welcome back these professionals.    But coming back home should not be made difficult or unnecessarily competitive for the doctors and those professionals who wish to do so.   And this is where our governments have a duty.    The government’s job must be to make homecoming an attractive option - to make this possible through policy outreach programs; to start with a new understanding of the phenomenon called the “brain drain.”   That understanding, that mind shift, is yet to occur.  It has to before a governmental outreach can be started.   The constant harping of “brain drain” may be an indicator of something else.  That something else is what some call “envy.”  But still, do we want these professionals back?   The best approach to bring them back is to start considering the members of the “brain drain” as part of a pool of immeasurable resources, or what we must call the “brain on the lease.”  This is a required paradigm shift.    Once we consider our trained professionals as the “brain on the lease” types from start, the move to ask them to return will be made easier because their leaving the motherland implies the concept of a return.   All the skills gained overseas on the near frontiers of knowledge and at no expense to the government, can be brought back home like a bounty.  The returns will be astronomically more in value than what they took out via the "brain drain.".   Not only newly acquired skills will be brought and passed on to others within the professions, but after years of work overseas, the professionals are likely to bring back tangible assets that will enhance more, in terms of investment and expenditures, the business enterprises they undertake.    I am yet to read a government policy paper, encouraging these professionals to bring back their talents to augment skills in professions or industries at home. Nor the incentives the government has lined up to make these happen.   Many professionals come back on their own.  But there have been obstacles.  Once in our midst, they encounter difficulties in integrating themselves into the very professional places and spaces they want to be productive at. For these obstacles, the larger society is the biggest loser.   I happen to live within a community of returned professionals, the majority of whom are highly competent professionals.  But they are heavily frustrated by conditions after their return; the most are the doctors.   These doctors are back with more sharpened skills and experiences to invest in, but the opportunities are hard to access.    The opportunities are there, but I am tempted to think that, psychologically, our collective mind is not structured to use the seasoned skills of these returned professionals.   For considerations is how much a doctor with 30 years’ experience abroad worth; in skillset he or she is likely to bring back, the physical assets to invest in-country and what the ultimate impact of all this on the national health and economy could be.   Concerning doctors, medical tourism anyone?   Indian doctors are encouraged to come home; bringing back their practices and patients and by so doing have made India a major hub for medical tourism.    The above situation is one of the many industries a “brain on the lease” project can generate for a country.   Another factor which impact must be looked at, while considering the “Brain on the lease,” concept is the retiring age we have imposed on our country.   The system is structured to retire people at age 60. The “brain on the lease” returnee will show up usually after age 65. That means finding responsible productive jobs with the government is out.   The above adverse situation is compounded by the eagerness of the generation left at home to hurry the old out of the system.    The wait and wish their senior professionals to retire on schedule; hard on their heels to own the cozy offices they leave behind.   Will these in-generation be ready to accept the “brain on lease” prospect who is likely to compete with them for those cozy positions?   Fat chance!  The average young professional in public service in line for promotion will quickly rebuff any competition from abroad.    Even the licensing of fellow doctors who have studied and practiced abroad has surfaced as a problem.  No allowance or deferment is given for experience and age. at the time of this writing.   There is a certification system that requires doctors to take examinations.  One Ghanaian doctor, very experienced professor at a renowned medical school in the US had to balk at the idea of the exam; an experience I described once as asking a Formula One professional car racer to recertify in order to take part in a Go-Kart racing event!.   Are all these obstacles there because of hostility or rightfully selected acts to bring integrity to the profession of medicine?   The attitude from some sectors in Ghana will say, “I can produce equally the same result that these returnees will bring, anytime and anywhere. So why do I need them, especially if it comes at my expense”?   This attitude is the very factor that will make it hard for the "brain on the lease" concept to work and then will likely enable the “brain drain” to endure.   It is our responsibility to jettison this old notion of "brain drain" and to lodge in its place the value embedded in the “brain on the lease” concept. E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, June 17, 2011 Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited.