Minister of Equipment: Up to 700 Doctors Migrate from Morocco Annually

Rabat – Morocco loses between 600 and 700 doctors every year who migrate to other countries, according to Nizar Baraka, Secretary-General of the Independence Party (Istiqlal), and current Minister of Equipment.

According to Le360, Baraka sounded the alarm over the state of shortage of health workers during a party meeting in the Azilal region on Saturday, where he detailed that Morocco is currently short a total of 30,000 doctors, according to a report from Le360.

In March 2023, the country’s Court of Audit released a report containing alarming data on the state of human resources within the health sector.

As of the end of 2021, the number of health workers per 1,000 per capita stood at 1.64, way below the 4.45 minimum necessary to reach sustainable development goals set by the United Nations (UN), the report says, adding that the rate varies widely across the country’s different regions.

Despite the gradual rise in the overall number of health workers, their proportion per capita did not see any notable improvement, the report explains. The number of workers per 10,000 capita went from 15.1 to 16.4 between 2011 and 2020.

The modest improvement is mainly due to the rise in the number of doctors in the private sector, as it climbed from 2.5 per 10,000 capita in 2011 to 3.8 in 2020. Conversely, the number of doctors in the public sector dropped from 3.6 to 3.3 over the nine years covered in the report.

Morocco’s health ministry says that the drop in the number of doctors in the public sector is caused by the fact that the public healthcare sector is “not attractive” for doctors.

In addition to the shortage of health workers, the country is plagued with an inequitable distribution. The rise in the number of healthcare workers only benefited a limited number of regions, including the Guelmim-Oued-Noun, which saw a 79% rise in the number of health workers in 2021, followed by Dakhla-Ouad-Dahab with a 158% increase.

On the other hand, other regions saw a notable decline in the number of health professionals such as the Rabat-Sale-Kenitra which saw a 7% drop in the number of health workers, and Beni-Mellal-Khenifra with a 3% decrease.