Iraq tries to entice back doctors

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BAGHDAD, June 27 (Reuters): The Iraqi government is trying to entice back hundreds of doctors who fled the country because of rampant violence and says improved security is already leading some to return. Rasheed al-Nassiri, head of the government's "Committee to Protect Doctors," said more than 400 Iraqi doctors had come back this year, encouraged by a drop in violence and better wages.

"Migration has stopped and now we are working hard to encourage migration in the opposite direction," Nassiri told a conference held in Baghdad this week to look at how to encourage doctors to return to the war-torn country.

Doctors and other professionals fled in their hundreds during the explosion of violence in the years following the 2003 US-led invasion, triggering an enormous brain drain.

But much attention has focused on doctors given that they were targeted because of their profession. Once the elite of Iraqi society, doctors were attacked by militants seeking to create a climate of fear and kidnappers demanding rich ransoms.

The official Iraqi Doctors' Syndicate said last December that 60 to 70 percent of 2,327 registered medical specialists with 15 to 20 years' experience had left Iraq. The syndicate said it had no new figures for how many doctors have returned.

Nassiri told the conference that around 176 doctors had been killed in the past five years, but the security situation is now much improved, with violence at a four-year low in May.