The loss of human capacity is a nightmare. I think it's acknowledged everywhere that the damage to many sectors—health, education, agriculture—is severe, and deeply severe. One of the problems in rolling out treatment is that we've lost so many people, we often don't have enough professionals or quasi-professionals to be able to make it all possible.
There is a tremendous effort to train and to retrain. Now, the World Health Organization says that Africa is a million health care workers short, which obviously is a huge number to overcome. But that is now under way in many countries.
When we do put useful things in place.... For example, DFID of the United Kingdom provided a package of close to $300 million over five years to enhance the salaries, the benefits, and the living conditions of the civil service in Malawi, with a particular focus on the health sector. People stopped leaving the country and looking for other places to work. They had some security of income and jobs. The Irish are doing the same in Lesotho.
When in Swaziland there was a wellness centre established for nurses and other health care workers, not only did they feel treated in a special way—one must do that with many of the health care workers, because they feel self-conscious about standing in the same lineups for treatment as the people to whom they will then be dispensing treatment—but in truth it stopped the bleeding of nurses into other countries.
So we have learned that by various interventions, we can maintain what professionals we have. Then you work like the devil to make sure that additional people are added, and you rely on some expatriate help to fill the gap.
But the loss is terrible. Just look at what's happening to the life expectancy in many of these countries; it's dropping to between the ages of 36 and 45. I mean, that's almost less than half of the life expectancy in Canada.