Thanks to the Epiverse TRACE-Lac project that develops tools for epidemic analysis, over 2,000 public health professionals have been trained in Latin America and the Caribbean. | Photo: TRACE-LAC

There are warnings today about the human capital flight that supposedly threatens the USA. It’s a phenomenon that for a country like Ukraine has become a harsh reality. It occurs when researchers who work abroad are lost to their home country and no longer contribute to innovation and progress there. The concept is discussed in all manner of contexts, often in cases of low-income countries such as Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

But researchers from these self-same countries have now published an article in the specialist journal Epidemics in which they advocate rethinking the concept. It would in fact be more appropriate, they say, to talk about a ‘brain gain’ than brain drain. The authors were all educated in countries of the Global North between 2015 and 2024 and are convinced that “Global South researchers serve as vital bridges between academic worlds, contributing irreplaceable contextual knowledge while building collaborative networks that advance infectious disease epidemiology research regardless of geographic location”.

The news portal Research Professional has summed up the examples that are discussed in the paper. Zulma M. Cucunubá is Colombian and the joint head of a project developing tools for epidemic analysis called Epiverse TRACE-Lac that has trained over 2,000 public health professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean. Bimandra Djaafara is the co-founder of a research community called Indemic that is busy modelling the spread of infectious diseases in Indonesia. Indemic started as a WhatsApp group, and today holds regular seminars and organises collaborations across all Southeast Asia.