Abstract
The migration of health professionals, especially doctors, from the developing (third) world to the developed (first) world has caused much guilty rumination in the host countries, and lamentation in the donor countries. Accusations of immoral ‘poaching’ have been levied, non-poaching treaties have been proposed and financial compensation has been suggested as a remedy. In all of this uproar, the doctors concerned have made sporadic attempts, in the correspondence columns of journals like the BMJ and the Lancet, to explain their decisions.1,2 Less thought has been given to the historical background, and indeed the historical inevitability, of this phenomenon. Researching the migration motives of one group of medical migrants led me, a South African medical graduate who migrated to Australia, to consider what common factors might have led these tens of thousands of doctors to leave home and hearth, family and friends, colleagues and careers.
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