Political Quotes

“this week I introduced the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2006. This bill was inspired last December, when I visited the Democratic Republic of Congo with Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. The Congo is one of the poorest, most violent regions on Earth. This past weekend, it held its first multiparty elections in nearly 50 years. That is a moment to celebrate. But one of the most profound challenges that the newly elected government will face is how to even begin to meet the health needs of its people. In the DRC, there are only 7 doctors and 44 nurses per 100,000 people. In the eastern Congo, which has witnessed terrible conflict and disease, there is only 1 doctor per 160,000 people. And, I was told, in the city of Goma, surgeons are literally one in a million. To put that in perspective, imagine three surgeons in a city the size of Chicago. Imagine living like that, and then imagine your doctors and nurses leaving for countries with better working conditions, better pay, and brighter futures. That is the situation that the Congo and almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa faces every day, as doctors and nurses leave rural areas for African cities and leave African cities for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western destinations. Every year, Africa loses another 20,000 trained health professionals to European and North American medical facilities. That is an enormous brain drain. As Randall Tobias, the U.S.…”