Brain Gain

I had an interesting conversation the other day with Missy Owen, our ‘surrogate grandmother’ who lives across the street, working for FHM as the in-country coordinator. She’s been living in Haiti for about 5 yrs now and has developed a fluent command of the Creole language and a thorough understanding of the Haitian culture and other norms. We were discussing the Haitian health system and why it’s in the state it is today and what other progress it’s been making. So a health ministry exists in Haiti but all of its expenditure are more or less heavily concentrated in Port-au-Prince and rarely make it out to surrounding cities or rural areas, places where the government health infrastructure is usually nonexistent. Here in Leogane, a city of roughly 135000 inhabitants, there's not a single government hospital! The harmful consequences are quite evident when during interviews we hear that people aren’t receiving proper treatment from the existing private hospitals or are unable to even access/afford any treatment. One of our translators Eunide, also contributed her opinion, blaming the Haitian health system on the poor organizational structure and lack of effective government action. She also mentioned that Port-au-Prince contains the only state medical school in the whole country (there are other private ones but these are unaffordable to most)

On top of this are the other unfortunate circumstances of Haiti that have contributed to the problem of a “brain drain,” where professionals may be trained in Haiti but leave once they attain their degree to practice in the US or France or other countries with a higher standard of living. This concept is inherent to many low-income countries and further perpetuates their often already diminished professional force.

However in Haiti, there's been a relatively recent force opposing this brain drain, all thanks to Cuba. Since 1998 Cuba has been assisting Haitian healthcare by sending in doctors and health experts for as long as Haiti needs. In addition the Cuban government has been paying for Haitians to attend medical school in Cuba provided they would later return to Haiti to work, implementing a sort of “brain gain” system. Cuba also supplied most of the initial disaster relief after the 2010 earthquake, and unlike many international relief organizations they have continued to maintain aid, and have made a commitment to helping improve the health system here. When speaking to people here it's clear the Cubans are health heroes, but sadly the US diplomatic relations with Cuba resulted in a very low coverage of Cuban efforts, and their immense aid to Haiti has often gone unnoticed.