Pre-Covid, there was already a trend of nurses and other health workers fleeing Africa and southeast Asia for better jobs in wealthier countries, but numbers have increased as the latter, often through active recruitment, struggle to beef up their own staff losses since the pandemic.
The World Health Organisation said poorer countries are haemorrhaging staff as global competition heats up, reports Reuters.
“Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems, do not have enough, with many losing their health workers to international migration,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general.
He was referring to a new WHO list of vulnerable countries which has added eight extra states since it was last published in 2020. They are: Comoros, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Laos, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Jim Campbell, director of the WHO's health workforce department, said safeguards for countries on the WHO list were important so they “can continue to … recover from the pandemic without an additional loss of workers to migration”.
At least 115 000 healthcare workers worldwide died from Covid during the pandemic but many more left their professions due to burnout and depression.
The WHO says it is not against migration of workers if managed appropriately. In 2010, it released a voluntary global code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel and urges its members to follow it.
Reuters article – Exodus of healthcare workers from poor countries worsening, WHO says (Open access)
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