The Medical Council of Malawi has 618 doctors on its register. But a good number of these will have arrived in the country from overseas, and others may have left the country. Recent estimates from the UK's Department for International Development put the real number of doctors in Malawi at 265. This number is low, in a country of 15 million.
The myth probably originated in the 1970s and 1980s, says Malawian doctor and social historian John Lwanda, who himself came to study medicine in the UK in the 70s. That was the decade an agreement was reached, whereby the Malawian government would send a few medical students to the University of Manchester each year. By the end of the 70s, the Malawian government was becoming anxious because many of the students were not returning from the UK after qualification. "In 1981 the ministry of health in Malawi made a last-ditch attempt to get their students and doctors to come back home. And we had a big meeting in Manchester - students, qualified doctors were invited to come and attend," says Dr Lwanda. There was a "severe shortage of doctors".
But, fortunately the College of Medicine in Malawi is doing a fantastic job and producing many more doctors than before, so it is said that hopefully the situation will improve in the future.
The doctor is needed in the impoverished nation. The device which dispatches a doctor to those countries will be called for in the future.
By Charlotte McDonald
BBC News
Published: 15 January 2012 Last updated at 00:04 GMT
When I was a little kid in America I sometimes went to the hospital for stitches or something. I remember seeing Indian doctors and thought that all or many Indian doctors work in American hospitals. When I got older, I read that in fact so many Indian doctors work in American hospitals. I guess their reasons must be similar to the Malawian doctors working in the UK.
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