ABSTRACT
International migration of doctors has acquired enhanced attention and importance, especially due to a steep rise in the rates of “brain drain” of healthcare workers in the Sub-Saharan region and the resulting fatal impact on their healthcare systems. South Asia is another region which has significantly lost its healthcare workers and dominance in the overseas stocks and flows of foreign healthcare workers in the OECD countries. The principal reasons for increased recruitment of overseas doctors in the OECD countries were ageing and shrinking labour markets in advanced countries and increased incomes and access to international labour and education markets due to advancement of IT in the developing countries. These reasons are expected to be sharpened with time and therefore would fuel international migration of health workers even more than before. However, in sharp contrast to these anticipations, developed countries, of late, are resorting to downsizing and restricting the inflow of foreign workers through tighter immigration and visa regulations. As a result, since 2005, there has been significant decline in the annual entry of Indian medical graduates to the UK. The chapter seeks to answer if these apprehensions are well founded or if these declining trends of their immigration are only cyclic in nature.
