Shortage of doctors in Morocco: The healthcare system at breaking point

Morocco continues to be hit by the shortage of doctors. The kingdom needs 47,000 doctors and the deficit could reach 53,000 by 2035, the Court of Auditors estimated in 2023. The causes? According to the Court of Auditors, a third of medical graduates leave the country each year, while the country is facing a deficit of 47,000 practitioners, reports Le Monde. Sociologist Hicham Jamid, author of a thesis on highly skilled migrants, talks about a "brain drain". According to the foundation of liberal medical teachers, they are estimated "between 600 and 700", up to a third of the practitioners trained annually in Morocco. Nearly 1,200 Moroccan doctors graduated in the kingdom were registered with the order, according to figures published by the national council of the order of doctors in 2017. And the French government plans to recruit practitioners in foreign countries including Morocco. A mission that President Emmanuel Macron has entrusted to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. The latter will in turn have to appoint an envoy tasked with going abroad to find doctors to fill the "abysmal void" in emergency services.

The working conditions of public health doctors in Morocco are at fault. The remuneration "does not encourage motivation within the public hospital," said the special commission on the development model, which had already highlighted in 2021 the need for better valuation of health professions. "A young resident contractor in a university hospital earns around 800 euros per month. At the end of his career, after thirty or thirty-five years of practice, it is around 2,500 euros. In France or Germany, he would earn three or four times more," says Loubna El Mansori, who practices in Tangier. Another cause: legislation that prohibits mobility within the kingdom. "Today, a doctor in Rabat does not have the right to practice in Casablanca, even one day a week, unless he closes his practice," explains infectious disease specialist and health economist Jaafar Heikel. He will add: "It’s as if a doctor in Paris couldn’t practice in Lille, it doesn’t make sense. If we facilitated the mobility of doctors within Morocco, we could quickly fill deficits in certain specialties, depending on the needs in each territory and in coordination with the supervisory authorities."

Meanwhile, the new reform of medical studies, reducing the duration of medical training from 7 years to 6 years, is not well received. This is evidenced by the boycott, for almost two months now, of classes, internships and first-semester exams by the majority of the some 24,000 students enrolled in public medical schools, according to the national commission of medical students. "A poorly prepared reform that raises more questions than it provides answers," says Imad Hamidine, president of the Tangier medical students’ office. He deplores the lack of visibility surrounding the fate of the content of the seventh year of training, until now devoted to hospital internships for full-time interns.