Africa is left without doctors and nurses. The countries of the continent invest in the education of their professionals who end up practicing in the West, this means that, In countries like Gambia they do not have even one nurse for every thousand people. Experts even talk about the production of people for health colonialism.

In Africa many do not believe in failed states, such as Teodoro Bondyalesociologist and retired nurse, who maintains that they are “states designed to fulfill the function of being a place of resource extraction” to favor Europe, and gives births as an example. While in the old continent they are scarce, in Africa the opposite is true. “They produce human beings who go to the north to work because they live in better conditions,” says Bondyale.

But this transaction is expensive for the country of origin, since it is the one who spends the money on training. That is why the sociologist complains: “The Senegalese government is the one that spends the money on their training, but the benefit goes to France“And, in addition to this, training a professional in the West costs much more than in Cameroon or Senegal.

For this reason, the fight is increasingly fiercer, now also with the nurses and even though the ratios by country are very unequal. The latest World Bank figures indicate that there are 9.2 nurses per 1,000 people in the UK, while in the Gambia they do not reach 0.9.

“On our shift there are only 10% British, the rest are Nigerians, Filipinos…”, laments Maria Luisa Piombe, a nurse in the United Kingdom. Despite these data, Europe continues to draw on professionals from these countries and it is difficult to stop such a well-oiled machine.

Furthermore, they defend their right to opt for a better life, like the man interviewed in this report, who says that if he is here it is because They offer you “things that I don’t have there”how to save lives, since in Spain people do not die of dehydration, as happens in African countries, where they see these cases every day and health workers are frustrated when they know that there is a solution, but it is not in their hands.