Going rural – protracted immersion or toewetting: Does it matter

Abstract

Universal access to healthcare mandates that all people worldwide haveaccess to comprehensive healthcare services, without suffering financialhardship. However, unless the severe shortages and inequitable distributionof healthcare workers, especially in many low- and middle-income countries,are addressed, universal access will, similar to ‘Health for all by the year2000’, go down in history as a desirable but unattainable goal. The dearth ofhealthcare workers follows an ‘inverse care law’, with the direst shortages inareas of greatest need, mostly rural areas. In a bid to address the challenge insub-Saharan Africa, many new medical schools with larger class sizes have sprungup in the past 20 - 30 years.