LILONGWE , Malawi ( CNN ) -- Like most African countries , Malawi has suffered from a severe shortage of nurses and key health workers . Godfrey Mdzudzuma , a nurse at Embangweni Mission Hospital , delivers a baby in the maternity ward . In the past , workers in the tiny southeast African nation of just 13 million inhabitants have been lured abroad by the promise of higher wages and better working conditions . But , the country best-known as the homeland of Madonna 's adopted children now has another claim to fame : It has succeeding in halting -- at least for now -- its crippling brain drain of nurses . Malawi 's solution ? To expand educational opportunities for nurses at all levels and keep them out of poverty by paying modestly more money . Countries do n't come much poorer than Malawi , but its healthcare system worked well back in the 1970s and early 1980s . When the former British colony gained independence in 1964 , president Hastings Banda , himself a physician , maintained a high level of training for nurses that included teaching all classes in English . By the late 1990s , however , Malawi was reeling from the AIDS epidemic . As if that were n't bad enough , the government also had to cut spending on health care and education as a condition for getting help from the U.S. and other countries to liberalize its trade and economy . The publicly funded health system , on which more than 95 percent of Malawians still depend for treatment , quickly started to fall apart . Watch a report about the impact of Malawi 's nursing shortage » . Registered nurses began leaving in droves . `` Every day I received reports from Nurses ' Council that so many nurses are now at the airport , '' Ann Phoya , the former head of nursing services for all Malawi told CNN . `` It was obvious that we needed to do something drastic . '' Phoya worked with others in Malawi 's Ministry of Health ( MOH ) to come up with an emergency plan that focused on nurses as they provided most of the primary care . The MOH then applied for around $ 160 million ( £100 million ) in international funding for their six-year initiative , primarily from the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom . The money was to be used to pay higher salaries to nurses -- quite a radical move in global development as donors worry it is unsustainable in the long haul . However , the situation in Malawi was getting desperate . The gamble paid off : The number of registered nurses leaving Malawi fell from a high of 111 ( the equivalent of two years of Malawi 's entire nursing graduates ) in 2001 to just six in the first half of 2008 . Enrollment at Malawi 's nursing schools jumped up by 50 percent . Success in one area has revealed a different problem -- that of an internal brain drain . As more international aid groups and universities set up health programs in Malawi , they are hiring nurses , all trained at Malawi taxpayer expense , away from publicly funded hospitals and clinics . The problem is even more acute in the rural areas , where most of Malawi 's people live . Embangweni Mission Hospital in northern Malawi has a good reputation but is located at the end of a long , dusty road , far from major towns , let alone cities . `` Young nurses with families do not really want to work here , '' said Catherine Mzembe , head of nursing at Embangweni . `` The local market is very small and although the hospital has running water , that is not the case in many homes . '' Even so , the hospital has made impressive strides in the past five years preserving mothers ' lives during pregnancy , as well as cutting the number of deaths due to malaria among children and adults . And that is perhaps the most important lesson to draw from Malawi 's efforts : it pays to look at how much has been accomplished with so little .
India 's innovative national program brings people out of poverty . Since then the external brain drain has slowed to a trickle . Many challenges still remain as the public health service is depleted .