BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Developing countries' fragile health systems are now facing even more challenges as some of their trained medical workers are leaving to work in richer countries while others died of COVID-19 in their frontline medical work, according to a report in The Guardian.

File photo: AFP

Slender income and difficult conditions in poor countries are driving their health workers to leave, said the report published on Monday, adding that global health specialists are launching initiatives to protect these medical staff, and persuading them not to be enticed overseas.

At least 115,000 health and care workers have lost their lives to COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates. Reporting is "scant" and the true figure is likely to be far higher, with many more having contracted the virus, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks at the World Health Assembly in May.

In richer countries, the share of foreign-trained or foreign-born medical workers has been increasing for two decades, the report said.