WHO concerned about Britain plugging nursing gaps with international staff
- Poorer nations increasingly losing healthcare workers to wealthier countries, concern about those on a ‘red list’, notably Nigeria and Ghana
- The two biggest inter national contributors to Britain’s nursing workforce – India and the Philippines – are not on the red list
Britain recruited a record number of international nurses in the last financial year to plug hospital staffing shortages, with as many as 10 per cent coming from so-called “red-list” countries where health staff should not be actively recruited.
Britain has long hired from abroad to staff its state-run National Health Service (NHS), and its vote to leave the European Union in 2016 meant the number of EU staff has dropped sharply in recent years.
In the year to March, nearly half of the 52,148 nurses, midwives and nursing associates who joined the British register were internationally educated, according to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Nearly 3,500 came from Nigeria, which is on the World Health Organization’s safeguards list.
The two biggest international contributors to Britain’s nursing workforce – India and the Philippines – are not on the red-list.
The WHO has warned that poorer countries are increasingly losing healthcare workers to wealthier countries, and has flagged concern over active recruitment in some countries.
Jim Buchan, senior fellow at the Health Foundation, said the numbers arriving in Britain from red-list countries, notably Nigeria and Ghana, had gone up markedly.
