The Metrics of the Physician Brain Drain

To the Editor: As African physicians who have experience in both the developing and the developed worlds, we believe that Mullan (Oct. 27 issue), 1 like others who have written about the metrics of the physician brain drain, 2 overlooks three important points. First, given the limited number of residency positions in the source countries, if the migrating physicians who are described in this article had stayed home, they might not have attained the qualifications they now hold. This would have left a workforce of minimally trained doctors with even fewer jobs befitting their qualifications. Second, a reversal of the “fatal flows” . . .