Two of Africa's COVID-19 experts are leaving the continent. Is this a brain drain or gain for Africa?

Two of Africa's COVID-19 experts are clearing out their desks and counting the hours as they prepare to take up new roles offered to them overseas

Two of Africa's COVID-19 experts are clearing out their desks and counting the hours as they prepare to take up new roles offered to them overseas.

"That's brain drain," said Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, a former president of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors. Recent data is scarce, but a November 2020 report by the African Union said that despite the risks of frontline work during the pandemic — migration to high-income countries remains attractive to health workers from Africa due to"better working conditions, including renumeration and workload."

The medical brain drain already comes at a great cost for Africa, which, according to pre-pandemic WHO figures, only has access to 3 percent of the world's health workers despite suffering"more than 22 percent of the global burden of disease."Africa is fighting off new strains of the coronavirus, and vaccination against the disease has been slow in the continent, where only 60 million of its more than 1 billion people have received a full course of the vaccine.

Ihekweazu told CNN that beyond his work in Nigeria, he is" strongly committed to seeing African countries grow from being just participants in the consumption of vaccines and other technologies to participants in the basic science and research that leads to them." Described as the"largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history," PEPFAR was established in 2003 as part of the US global AIDS response to prevent millions of HIV infections and nip the epidemic in the bud. More than $85 billion has been invested by the US government in tackling HIV/AIDS around the world.

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