Doctor’s Brain Drain in Nepal:
Exploring the Patterns, Causes, Consequences and Solutions

Bed Raj Phuyel(51-118203)

Submitted to:Professor Nobuhiro Hiwatari

The University of Tokyo
Graduate School of Public Policy/International Program(As a required research paper for the course completion of Case Study “International Political Economy”)

July 2013

Doctor’s Brain Drain in Nepal:
Exploring the Patterns, Causes, Consequences and Solutions

Bed Raj Phuyel(51-118203)

Abstract
Doctors’ ‘brain drain’ being a common problem for many of the developing countries;
Nepal is assumed to be one of the sufferers at least in health care outcomes, yet relatively lessstudied case. In this context, this research paper tries to explore the intensity and distributionof doctor’s brain drain in Nepal, tries to find out the specific causes, highlight some of theconsequences, and to suggest practical solutions in national government perspective.
Descriptive and qualitative analytical methods are used to analyze available secondary data.
The research findings suggest that there is a remarkable increasing trend of doctor’s
emigration in recent years with emigration rate of 9% out of total stock in 2004; and morethan 50% among IoM graduates during 2003-04 graduation era.USA is the dominantreceiving country followed by UK among 20 receiving countries. The dominant cause of suchskewed emigration distribution in general seems to be the existence of professional focusedselective immigration policies in USA and UK as pull factor. Contrary to the hypothesis, thehealth care outcomes seem to be not affected adversely despite significant emigration of
doctors. Moreover, there is a stagnation in recent years in doctor’s density and significant
loss in educational investment (estimation is 10.85 to 18.2 million USD per year). Major
suggested solutions include: to take national policy stand of doctors’ production either
domestic or international market oriented and to act accordingly, and to initiate bilateralnegotiations with USA and UK, based on international codes of practices in hiring foreign
doctors, to make the win-win scenario for both sending and receiving countries.

1. Introduction
In this globalized world people are migrating across countries in search of better
opportunities. The emigration pattern, in general, subsists in developing to developed
countries dimension and among professionals.Health professionals, including doctors, are in
the highly moving category. The phenomenon is the medical brain drain.The term ‘brain
drain’ in medical sector as per Whellams (2009) definition is an across the country movementof health professionals comprising doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.Nepal, being a2

developing country is not an exception. In this regard, exploring different aspects of doctors’
emigration in Nepal is a worth doing research. Furthermore, in the context of critical problem
reported in World Health Organizations’(WHO) world health report (2006) that including
Nepal, there are 57 countries which are facing a Critical Shortage of health service providers(Doctors, nurses and midwives), with quite below the standard of 23 health service providers
per 10000 people; that intensifies the importance of this research. Historically, doctors’ brain
drain in Nepal is found to begin several years ago (WHO, 2006); however, presumably thedoctors’ brain drain in Nepal has intensified in recent years, specially due to ‘external brain
drain’.Shanakar (2010) stated that the health workers’ migration from Nepal is a major
problem but lacks proper documentation. Hence, doctors ‘brain drain’ from Nepal is an
important issue to research for the international political economydiscourse. Therefore, thisresearch tries to explore the emigration patterns, the causes of such flow, some consequences
and certain practical solutions in the form of policy recommendation.
Nepal is a developing country with 26.5 million people (Central Bureau of Statistics,
2011) served by about 12000 doctors of modern medicine (Ministry of Finance, 2012). There
are 0.08 health centers per 100 000 population; in 2006, there were about 2 doctors of modern
medicine per 2 nurses, 0.1 pharmacists and 6.3 community health workers for every 10 000
population (Shankar, 2010). In this context, as of 2010, none of the 57 crisis countries(including Nepal) had reached the prescribed health worker density ratio, one of the reasonsof this crisis is massive brain drain (Dacuycuy, 2008). Therefore, to achieve basic health careservices in Nepal, the doctor’s ‘brain drain’ should be managed somehow. In this sense, thisresearch can be helpful for the policymakers.

3

1.1

Research Questions, Objectives and hypotheses
Even though the brain drain is well established field of study among scholars, Nepal’s

brain drain in medical doctors’ sector is found to be relatively less studied. Therefore, in thispaper I tried to explore the wider perspective of medical doctors’ brain drain in government
policy perspective with the following questions to explore: How many Doctors are
migrating? Why they are migrating? What are the consequences? What could be the practicalsolutions? Specifically, I tried to look at either pull or push factors are dominant for the
doctor’s emigration and is there any role of receiving countries’ immigration policy or not? In
response to these questions following are my working hypotheses:

There is significant

prevalence of doctors brain drain in Nepal, Receiving country’s immigration policy is a factor
to consider for the doctors’ emigration from Nepal and there are adverse effects of doctors’
emigration on health outcomes, coverage and educational investment.
2.1

Data, Methods, Variables and Limitations

This study is mostly based on the secondary data adopted from two separate studies. The
first data set is adopted from Bhargava, Docquier & Moullan (2011) study available online inwww.siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINTERNATIONAL/.../MBDDataSet.xls,the available
panel data is converted to time series for this study that covers 14 years from 1991 to 2004 innational total perspective. The second data set is adopted from Zimmerman et al. (2012)
study, which is available in the spreadsheet from ftp://nsi.edu.np (user name:iom_data@nsi.edu.np; password: admin123). This data is about practice locations of doctors
graduated from the Institute of Medicine (IoM), the first medical school during 1983 to 2004,
categorized in three different time ranges (1983-87, 1988-2002 & 2003-2004). Apart fromthese, secondary data from different sources are used to support the arguments.
4

The study methods include mainly descriptive and qualitative analysis. Data are plotted in
bar and line charts and these trends are linked qualitatively with the particular attributes
considered. Doctors’ emigration is a dependent variable that can be explained by immigration
policy of receiving country and various Push/Pull/enabling factors as independent variables.

2. Analysis of Brain Drain Patterns
In this section, different patterns of doctor’s emigration are presented in order toperceive the intensity and distribution of the doctor’s brain drain in Nepal.

Since acomplete and compiled data is not available, two different data sets, as mentioned in data
section, are used to present the patterns. The number of emigrated doctors from 1991 to
2004 (figure 1) shows a significant increasing trend of doctors’ emigration. However, theFigure 2: Doctors' Emigration Rate

Number of Doctor

Figure 1: Number of Emigrated Doctors from Nepal
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

0.100
0.090

125

0.080
0.070
82

0.060
0.050

54
47

8

9

11

13

17

20

26

31

34

0.040

40

0.030
0.020
0.010
0.000

year

Year

Data source: Bhargava et al. 2011

doctor’s emigration rates, computed by dividing number of emigrated doctors by total
number of doctors (emigrated doctors plus doctors in Nepal) in a certain year (figure 2), therate has increased marginally until 1998 then declined feebly and ultimately increased
significantly after year 2002 to reach about 9 percent out of total Nepalese doctors
emigrated to different countries in 2004. The patterns seen in these two figures haveindicated a prominent and consistent existence of doctor’s brain drain problem in Nepal,
particularly in later years.
5As a sending country, Nepalese doctors are emigrated among six developed
countries (figure 3). Among which, USA is preferred by most of the Nepalese emigrated
doctors leaving far behind UK. For example in 2004, out of 125 total emigrated doctors 80
went to USA and 3o went to UK and remaining 15 went to other four countries. Except
USA and UK other four countries have consistently attracted less than 10 doctors eachyear.
In relating these trends, some peculiar increasing trends can be seen for USA after
1994/1995 and for UK after 2002. These significant variations have been indicating
towards some domestic or international policy/event that might have triggered thephenomenon. In this study, these trends are compared with historical policy events in bothsending and receiving country’s perspective seeking answer to the question: what are thereasons for such a significant increase in emigration of doctors? Are some push factors
responsible for it or some pull factors were playing the role? In the subsequent section of
cause analysis these factors are discussed in details.
Figure 3: Number of doctors emigrated: receiving countrywise
90

Number of doctors

80

Australia
Italy

70

Sweden

60

UK

50

USA
South Africa

40

30
20
10
0
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Year

Data source: Bhargava et al. 2011

6

Similar trend is seen using data of Zimmerman et al. (2012) (figure 4) study. They foundthat out of 710 tracked doctors, 73% went to USA, 7.8% went to UK and remaining 19.2 %were flown to other 18 countries.

Figure 4: Total Number of Emigrated IoM Graduates (1983-2004) :receiving cournty wise

Number of doctors

200

188

150
100
50

20

8

8

7

4

4

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

0

Data source: Zimmerman et al., 2012

From above patterns analyses, the problem of brain drain can be established as astatement that there is significant prevalence of doctors’ brain drain in Nepal, distributed in
up to 20 countries. USA is the most preferred destination followed by UK. Similarly thestudy found that recent graduates are more and more willing to go abroad (figure 5),Specifically to USA then to UK compared to previous era’s graduates. The emigration rate
has reached more 53 % in 2003-04 graduation era compared to 37 % in 1988-2002 era and
14 % during 1983-87 graduation eras (Zimmerman et al., 2012).

7

Figure 5: Graduation Era wise practice location

Source: Zimmerman et al., 2012

From the above graphical presentations, it is now worthwhile to find the causes why
such a vast majority of doctors are being emigrated from Nepal especially to USA and UK?
Subsequent section deals with this question.

3. Causes Analysis: Why doctors are emigrating from Nepal?
There can be numerous reasons working together or independently causing doctors’
emigration; however, most of the literatures have discussed two broad aspects of causes of
emigration, the Push factors and the Pull factors (Dacuycuy, 2008) and some causes can beclassified as the enabling factors. Recent study about doctors’ brain drain in developing
countries by Nair and Webster (2012) have stated some push factors as Low-employment
opportunities, Low wages and poor working environment in home country, Lack ofprofessional developmentand specialist training especially in advanced medical technologies
and Political instability. Similarly, the same study have stated number of pull factors such as:
High-employment opportunities due to shortage of health staff in the destination countries
higher wage, Proximity and family links in destination countries. This paper assumes these8factors very relevant and equally applicable in Nepal’s case as well and tries to link suchfactors with the previous sections emigration patterns especially the receiving country wise
emigration pattern (figure 3). Moreover, some country specific factors are also considered foranalysis, for example, change in the sociocultural aspect about doctors’ profession, security
threat for doctors as push factors. In case of Nepal, the immigration policies of USA and UK
are also hypothesized to be important pull factor. Moreover, introduction of internet andexpansion of airline services could have played some supporting role either.
3.1

Push Factors Analysis
When we try to fit these causes in Nepalese context, it can be seen for push factors thatcertainly there is low employment opportunities for doctors. In fact there are three major
sectors offering employment: government, Private and Non government (NGOs) sector.
Detail demand supply data is not available however there is around 1798 posts in government
hospitals many of the seats are vacant. Large private sector demand and NGOs job market(currently 8335 are working in this sector) are also not sufficient for about 813 qualified
doctors produced each year or the combined figure is showing that out of about 12000
registed doctors in Nepal only about 9000 are working in Nepal (Neupane, 2013) rest have no
option then to go abroad.
Earning difference between Nepal and other countries specially USA and UK may bequite large and is acting as the push factor for Nepal and pull factor for USA and UK. For
example, an average earning of a doctor in Nepal is 85,000 NPR (about 1000 USD) per
month (www.salaryexplorer.com) while that of US based doctor an entry level doctor canearn median salary of $224,000 per year on average ranging from $138,000 to $ 465,000(http://www.profilesdatabase.com/resources/2011-2012-physician-salary-survey).The
difference is more than 18 times compared to Nepal, which seems important motivating
9

factor for doctor’s to emigrate to USA. However, the rapid emigration after 1994 for USA
and after 2002 in UK cannot better explain by this factor because the wage difference could
be similar before those years as well.
The Nepalese context other push factor: inadequate professional development opportunity
is also most relevant one. In recent years, the Bachelors’ Degree (MBBS) is not consideredsufficient for practice in Nepal in general, however there are only limited post graduate
medical colleges, indicating the possibility of emigration for higher education.
Political instability and socioeconomic conditions could also be thehidden but importantfactors in triggering the emigration pattern in Nepal. A decade long armed conflict extended
from 1996 to 2006 was the most difficult situation for any good earning professionals in
Nepal because they were asked for huge amount of money several times and also got politicalthreats to practice fearlessly. Government was weak to maintain law and order so could notassure the security in total for high earning professionals- the doctors, reaction could be thehigh proportion of doctor’s emigration. But, the two particular years of rapid growth could
not also be linked with this phenomenon perfectly.
4.1

Pull Factors Analysis: immigration policies as a key player
The shortage of health workers in USA and UK might have created the good job

market for Nepalese doctors but the immigration laws were not that favorable for Nepalese toenter USA and UK. It can be seen in figure 3, that until 1993 for USA and 2002 for UK thenumber of doctors emigrating were less than 10, nearly equal to other receiving countries.
But after these two years, the rates were dramatically increased. What could be the reason?
This study tried to link this phenomenon with the immigration policies change of respective
countries and found coinciding with those turning points.
10In case of USA, diversity visa (DV) lottery system was conceived after amendment of
Immigration Act in 1990 and started in 1994

allowing lottery based entry system forindividuals from eligible countries, Nepal has been eligible for this from the beginning(www.dvlottery.com). Therefore, it is quite obvious that the rapid expansion of doctors’
emigration was a result of implementation of the change in immigration policy in USA since
1994. One can argue with this statement empirically; however for this qualitative analysis,
this is the distinctive reason that could explain the rapid growth of the doctors’ emigration
could also have played important role which can be distinctly seen in Figure (3).
Similarly the in case of UK, as Boswell (2008) stated that inJanuary 2002, UK
launched a new Highly Skilled Migrants Program in order to attract scientists, doctors,
business and finance professionals to the UK. The results is clear in figure (3) that in exactly
the same year doctors migration to UK has started growing up significantly.
Apart from push and pull factors some ‘enabling factors’ could also have played
supporting role for doctors’ migration. For example, establishment of democratic system in1990 in Nepal could have played important role to widen the professional horizon andentertaining the personal right to movement. Similarly, introduction of internet facility in
1993in Nepal (Shakya, 2007) and rapid expansion of international airlines connection after
1990s might have supported the phenomenon either.
Therefore, it can be stated in more general term that USA and UK’s selective
professional focused immigration policy adoption had triggered the doctors’ emigration ratein Nepal, after 1994 for USA and after 2002 in UK; combined with other push pull andenabling factors, but with domination of immigration policy effects.

11

4. Consequences analysis: Finding the effects of emigration
As a result of rapid emigration of doctors, this study has hypothesized number of possible
consequences mainly in health outcome, doctor to people ratio and educational investmentthat may forgone with emigrated doctors.
Health outcome measure
The World Health Organization (WHO) (2006) had reported 23 health workers(doctors, nurses, midwives) per 10,000 is a critical number to achieve millennium
development goals. Looking at the health related Millennium Development Goals’ progress
in Nepal (Table 1), it is not distinctly visible that such effect has existed in Nepal despite
significant portion of doctors immigrating and government facing severe doctors shortage.
Table 1: Some Health related Millennium Development targets and their progress
1990

2000

2005

2010 2015 (Target)

GOAL: 4 REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY
Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Under-five mortality rate

162

91

61

50

Infant mortality rate

108

64

48

41

54
34

42

71

85

85.6

>90

Proportion of one-year
immunized against measles

olds

MDG GOAL 5: REDUCE MATERNAL MORTALITY
Target 5.A: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR)

850

415

281

229

213

Proportion of births attended byskilled health personnel

7

11

19

28.8

60

Source: MDGs Progress Report Nepal,2010

Above table shows that there is consistent improvement in health related indicators.
This progress seems to be quite interesting in the sense that despite significant existence ofdoctor’s emigration problem, the health indicators were consistently improved. This
indicates that one of the hypotheses laid in this study may not be true. However, this12

phenomenon may require empirical studies to ascertain. But in general there seems to be no
significant adverse effects in health related outcomes due to doctor’s brain drain Nepal.
Doctor’s density measure
The figure (6) shows the doctors density per 10000 people. The interesting part of thisfigure is stagnation of doctor to population ratio around o.52 doctors per 10 000 population

Number of Doctors

Figure 6: Doctors per 10,000 People in Nepal
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30
0.20
0.10
0.00

Data source: Bhargava et al. 2011

in later years. This stagnation might be related could be related with the high ratio of
doctors ‘emigration in the context of fairly enough production of doctors (813 doctors on
average per year) and a moderate population growth of 1.65 % per year (CBS, 2011).
Cost measure
Nepal government has been investing or channeling the significant portion of medical
education from government coffer. If a doctor emigrates forever then Nepal faces multiple
losses including direct investment on student loss, its social value loss and so on. Four
medical colleges run under direct government subsidies producing about 500 doctors eachyear. In the rest of 17 private medical colleges provides 10% of admission seats forgovernment scholarship for government quota each. This means, there are approximately
200 students graduatingin100% subsidized schemes from private medical schools resulting
700 are getting subsidized medical education. Estimating the individual total cost forundergraduate study (MBBS) is estimated to 30,00000- 50,00000NPR (Bohara, 2012) or
13

about 31,000- 52,000 USD (1 USD=95.59 NPR July 20, 2013 rate) during MBBS course.
Assuming the 50% emigration rate out of 700 subsidized scheme graduates 350 will leave
the country means the government is losing 10.85 to 18.2 million USD each year, which is asignificant amount forgone by Nepal Government.

5. Conclusion
In general, in this globalized and human right focused world, emigration of doctor is his
individual human right and cannot be prevented but can be minimized (Nair & Webster,2012). Nepal was found to suffer from consistent but moderate doctor’s migration about 9 %of total stock of doctors using Bhargava et al. data. However, it is found to be suffered
severely from severe doctors Brian drain in recent years reaching more than 50% ofgrauatuates leaving the counties from Zimmerman et al.(2012) data set. Sice the later data
was the more precise one got form individual tracking from the source county it should be
more realistic and can beconcluded recent year’s emigration rate could be much higher than
50% of the graduates.USA is the dominant receiving country followed by UK among 20 suchreceiving countries.
This severe emigration is the aggregate effect of ‘push, pull and enabling’ factors but apeculiar pattern is found in USA and UK as destination country. The doctor’s emigrationfrom Nepal is seen to be peaked corresponding to the respective point based immigration
policy changes to attract many professionals including doctors. Therefore, it can beconcluded that, in case of Nepal, pull factors are more dominant to accelerate the emigration
rate than any other factors.
From cause analysis, it could be concluded that although there are numerous factors
playing some role in emigrating Nepalese doctors, the professional focused immigration14

policies implemented by developed countries seem to have a dominant pulling behavior toaccelerate the doctor’s emigration from Nepal. The strong evidences are USA and UK. The
emigration pattern for USA after 1994, the year of Diversity Visa (DV) system
implementation and for UK after 2002, the year of point based immigration policy
realization, are the strong cases to support this conclusion.
On the other hand, consequences analyses could lead us to a conclusion that contrary to
the hypothesis, health outcomes are generally not found to be severely affected by thedoctor’s emigration. This is quite surprising finding in which further empirical researches canbe done. Similarly, it might be the case due to doctor’s emigration, the doctor to population
ratio has stagnated in 0.5 doctors per 10000 populations. Likewise, the direct educational costforgone is significant (estimated to 10.85 to 18.2 million USD)

6. Policy Recommendations
General truth about this doctors’ emigration problem is that in today’s globalized, wellinformed and democratic world, it is not practical to argue in favor of preventing doctor’s
emigration totally. In fact, human rights ‘right to move’ could be attracted or the opportunity
frontiers could be halted (Dacuycuy, 2008) apply such direct restriction measures.
Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that the problem should be managed to a level at least to
minimize the adverse effects in sending country’s perspective. In this context, after analyzing
the Nepal’s brain drain problem, this study provides following policy recommendations forrespective government are emphasized as an indirect and also the practical solutions to copewith this problem among numerous possibilities.

15 Nepal’s policy stand should be clear about producing doctors and should act
accordingly. Whether Nepal intends to focus on domestic health care market or wants
to attract remittances from international market. From the policy scanning, it can begenerally perceived that Nepal is focusing in achieving domestic market demand, butequally the government has not been taking powerful policy measures to address the
problem.
 If domestic market is the priority then in order to address the problem in long term,
this study strongly supports the implementation of findings from Zimmerman et al.
(2012) study.

For example, the study suggested some solutions to address theemigration problem through the selective admission criteria in medical schools:
particularly selecting rural school based students, students with paramedical
background among other criteria seems to be very practical and politically the safest
way to deal with this problem.
 During this research, it is realized that the data for doctor’s emigration in Nepal is notwell documented. Therefore, if the government could initiate a policy to update
emigration data using Zimmerman et al. (2012) methodology of ‘alumni tracking forpractice location’, it could be a significant achievement to further analyze the problem
and finding some safest ways for the policymakers to manage the problem.
 Another measure could be to implement a national demand focused curriculum
including psycho-social courses as argued by Bohara (2012). This approach will
nurture individual ‘social responsibility’ of a doctor to the national health care sector.
 Importantly, in the context of severity of the emigration phenomenon, before thepatterns be worst, together with various retention oriented long term measures; inshort run, Nepal should be able to initiate bilateral negotiations, based on‘International code of practices of recruiting doctors’, with USA and UK where the16highest emigration exists, at least to balance the loss or to find the way to make winwin situation for both parties.


The government should find many attractive ways to return the emigrated doctors
either temporarily or permanently. Even if government cannot compensate themcomparably, the government or medical schools could acknowledge emigrant’s
abroad trainings by arranging visiting scholar positions, or by appointing as honorary
trainers as suggested by Puri (2007), or should be able to find some innovative ways
to utilize the abroad training knowledge and skills.

 Finally, it is desirable to initiate policies for doctors’ retention, if not, utilization ofemigrated ones in micro level and at least to make win-win negotiations at thenational level.

17

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