BMJ  2004;328:47-48 (3 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7430.47-b

Letter

Academic medicine: time for reinvention

Encourage overseas based researchers to return to improve academic medicine in the developing world

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Although the obstacles to global health posed by inadequate health research capacity, particularly in developing countries, are well documented,^1-4 bureaucratic barriers preventing overseas based health academics in developed countries willing to return are hardly addressed.

Firstly, recognition of academic qualifications is an issue. Current practices of most medical councils in developing countries apparently indicate that recognition of academic qualifications operates primarily on the principle of reciprocity. Consequently, some "innocent" overseas medical academic graduates from reputable universities invariably get caught in the ideological crossfire relating to reciprocal (non-) recognition of certificates.

Advocates of a revival of academic medicine in the developing world may mediate to neutralise this obstacle by providing an international grading system that ranks medical research centres and medical and public health schools at universities by an aggregate of measures, analogous to the US stockmarket "Standard and Poor's 500" list. Such a measure would . . . [Full text of this article]

School of Public Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia niyiawofeso@hotmail.com

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Practising just medicine in an unjust world

Zulfiqar Bhutta
BMJ 2003 327: 1000-1001. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

BMJ Publishing Group to launch an international campaign to promote academic medicine

Jocalyn Clark and Richard Smith
BMJ 2003 327: 1001-1002. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Griffiths, S. M (2005). Academic medicine: who is it for?: Public health faces similar difficulties to academic medicine. BMJ 330: 362-363 [Full text]  

Online poll

Find out more here>> and here>>