Many nations in the developing world invest scarce funding into training health workers. When these workers migrate to richer countries, particularly when this migration occurs before the source community can recoup the costs of training, the destination community realizes a net gain in resources by obtaining the workers' skills without having to pay for their training. This effect of health worker migration has frequently been condemned as 'poaching' or a case of theft. I assess the charge that the rich nations (...) of the world poach the resources of the developing world through the active recruitment of migrants. I argue that the charge of poaching is misguided in these cases. The misuse of the term poaching is particularly troubling as it distracts attention away from the many actual moral wrongs taking place through the process of health worker migration and objectifies health workers. (shrink)

I would like to thank all of the respondents to my article both for their expansions on the theme of health worker migration and for their criticisms of my argument against the use of the term ’poaching’ in the context of international health worker migration. In this response, I will clarify my argument in light of the worries raised primarily by Tache and Schillinger and Ari Zivotofsky and Naomi Zivotofsky.