London, Oct 20: Britain's National Health Service (NHS) has been accused of poaching doctors from India and causing what is dubbed as the “Great Brain Robbery”. Overseas recruitment schemes launched by the NHS are targeting senior psychiatrists in India and luring them to UK with promises of a consultant's salary, attractive relocation and housing costs.
Vikram Patel, a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says India has one psychiatrist per 300,000 population compared with one per 9,000 population in UK.
"Despite this, the NHS has launched a scheme to recruit senior psychiatrists and other specialists from India and other developing countries," he says in the British Medical Journal.
"This scheme will worsen the brain drain and inequities in global health unless it is linked with measures to enable the flow of doctors back to developing countries."