Poorer countries are losing more and more health workers to wealthier ones as the latter try to offset their own workforce losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes through active recruitment, he said on Tuesday. the World Health Organization.
The trend of nursing and other staff leaving parts of Africa or Southeast Asia for better opportunities in wealthier countries in the Middle East or Europe was already underway before the pandemic but has accelerated since then, according to the UN health agency, as global competition intensifies.
“Health workers are the backbone of any health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the most fragile health systems in the world do not have enough of them and many are losing their health workers to international migration.“, said Tedros Adhanom GhebreyesusCEO of the WHO.
He was referring to the new list of vulnerable countries of the WHOin which eight more states have been added since the last time it was published in 2020. These are: Comoros, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Laos, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
jim campbelldirector of the health personnel department of the WHOtold the press that the safeguards for the countries included in the WHO list are important so that “can continue to rebuild and recover from the pandemic without additional loss of workers due to migration”.
Some 115,000 health workers died from COVID worldwide during the pandemic, but many more left their professions due to burnout and depression, he said. In a sign of the tension, protests and strikes have been organized in more than 100 countries since the pandemic began, he added, including the United Kingdom and the United States.
“We have to protect workers if we want to guarantee the population’s access to health care“, he claimed Campbell.
Asked which countries were attracting more workers, he said rich OECD countries and Persian Gulf states, but added that competition among African countries had also intensified.
Source: Reuters
Source: Gestion
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