The Global Forum for Health Leaders began in Taipei on Sunday.
"This conference is an opportunity for Taiwan to participate on an international level on health issues," said Ken Kuo (郭耿南), director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Development.
This is the forum's second year and the number of participants has grown, he said.
"We have more than 200 participants from more than 300 countries," said Kuo, who moderated a number of the discussion sessions at the forum.
The focus of this year's forum is sustainable global health, with hot-button issues including the disparity of care between the developed and developing world.
"We've got 6.3 billion potential patients in the world," said Delon Human, the secretary-general of the World Medical Association, "but only 110,000 hospitals, 9 million doctors and 14 million nurses."
According to Human, there is a chronic lack of investment in health care in both developing and developed countries. Doctors are habitually overworked and less likely to be well-compensated.
Citing this year's doctors' strike for higher pay in Germany, Human said that medical professionals are encountering greater pressure and are more vulnerable to burnout.
"There should be no artificial ceiling on medical spending as a percentage of GDP," Human said.
"After all, such ceilings are not imposed on defense spending," he said.
For James Johnson, chairman of the British Medical Association, however, the most pressing problem is not with the total level of health care spending, but rather the unequal distribution of medical resources, which includes the brain drain experienced by poor countries as richer nations poach their doctors and nurses.
"Mozambique has a population of 18 million, but only 500 doctors, while Canada has 500,000 doctors for 30 million people," Johnson said. "Since independence, Zambia has trained 600 doctors. Only 50 remain in the country."
The US was singled out as a particular culprit by Johnson.
"The United States is making no effort to produce health care workers itself," Johnson said. "Health care workers are treated as a commodity like oil."
Johnson said that he favored putting measures in place to restrict the immigration of health care workers from developing nations, at least for a period of time after they become qualified.
However, Kgosi Letlape, chairperson of the South African Medical Association, disagreed.
"Medical professionals emerge from school with a lot of debt. They need go to foreign countries to earn money," he said.
According to Letlape, restricting where doctors can practice their profession is a violation of their freedom.
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