Family medicine in Africa

摘要

Our fellow generalists have shown realism and honesty combined with academic rigour about the difficulties they face in establishing family medicine in Africa (except in South Africa). The tendency to hope that family medicine will fill the gap is understandable in a continent with such a huge shortage of healthcare workers1 but it sounds as if family medicine in Africa is drifting into becoming a hospital-based specialty and its links with its ‘spiritual home’ in primary care are becoming severely stretched; as evidenced by the comments from Kenya.