The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of wages on health professionals’ job mobility. Based on health professionals data collected in urban areas of Cameroon, a binomial logit model was estimated. Our results show that wages are negatively correlated with the likelihood of health professionals to consider an imminent departure from the current health facility for another job in or outside the health sector. The increase of one unit of the residual potential wage gain decreases the probability to consider a voluntary departure from the current job of 4 per cent to 8 per cent for another job in the health sector or outside. Wage improvement can then be considered as a retention policy of health professionals in their current health facility. This strategy can be used to curb the migration problems of health professionals and strengthen a health system which is already suffering the pangs of the human resource crisis for health. However, this wage improvement strategy expresses the complexity of retention policies for health professionals based on wages in the public sector, as it can induce adverse effects linked to the loss of human resources.
