Speakers at a conference, titled “US and Europe outsourcing skilled physicians from Arab and developing countries – methods, risks and how to stop,” stressed the need to attract the Arab expertise to contribute to development in their countries.

The conference, hosted by Kuwait yesterday, urged cooperation with the Arab League to find a mechanism for halting the phenomenon of brain drain in the medical field, said Secretary-General of the Gulf Federation of Cancer Control (GFCC) and Chair of the Conference Dr. Khaled Al-Saleh on Wednesday.

“The conferees recommended that the League and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) should sponsor such mechanism and co-organize workshops on the methods of luring the Arab expertise into migration to developed countries with a view to minimizing the risks of this process,” he told reporters.

“The phenomenon of brain drain from the Arab world is one of the biggest losses and poses one of the biggest risks to all Arab countries, except some Gulf countries,” Dr. Al-Saleh noted.

The Arab countries incur losses of up to USD 200 billion annually due to migrating expertise and lukewarm interest in scientific research, he added.

On the causes and motives behind brain drain, he said they range from economic and scientific to social and political ones.

The annual rate of migrating skills and expertise rose by 8.6 percent in the recent years, he said, noting the number of talented migrant from the Arab countries went up from nearly 500,000 in 1990 to one million in 2000.

“The figure hit 2.6 million in 2020 which raises the alarm about the risks to development in our Arab world,” he added.

Source: Kuwait News Agency