Half of all money donated to poor countries should be spent on public services to enable recipient countries to pay healthcare workers, the United Kingdom's international development minister Gareth Thomas has said.

His comments came at the first meeting of the all party parliamentary group on AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria and soon after the launch of a report from the African Medical and Research Foundation that sets out recommendations for the UK and other donor and African countries to tackle the serious shortage of health workers.

The report cites estimates of a worldwide shortage of 4.2 …