JOHANNESBURG – The medical supplies had been shipped. The planning began a year in advance. Then the coronavirus arrived, and Dr.
Charmaine Emelife’s heart sank. The annual trip to Nigeria to provide free medical care — the flagship project of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas — had been set to start Sunday but can't go on.
Now the 4,000-member organization, like diaspora medical groups around the world, is scrambling for other ways to help back home, where it might be more needed than ever before.
A global “brain drain” of medical professionals to richer countries has left developing nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and elsewhere without tens of thousands of highly skilled workers.