Nurses fear their collective will be cut in half after the pandemic

After a pandemic that has had a serious impact on health professionals (at least 115,000 died from COVID-19) the nursing world fears a serious global shortage of professionals this decade, in which their number could be cut in half, warned the International Council of Nurses (ICN).

The president of the council, Annette Kennedy, declared together with top officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) that they fear losing about 13 million nurses through retirement, abandonment or other causes, almost half of the 27 million that currently there is in the world.

“No healthcare system can survive with such a reduction in nurses”, He warned, detailing that a great march of these professionals is especially feared in Europe and North America.

Kennedy stated that already during the pandemic it has been proven that the world needed at least 6 million more nursing professionals than there are currently, and stressed that the high number of deaths in this group “it points to governments, their lack of care and protection for health workers ”.

The president of ICN assured that the real figures of infections and deaths in the health sector are surely much higher than those provided by official figures, which is why she requested a more standardized collection of data in this regard.

In this regard, the president of the World Medical Association, Heidi Stensmyren, added that the international treaty against pandemics that the WHO could discuss with its member countries later this year should oblige the signatories to collect this type of information on victims in the health sector.

Kennedy stated that the pandemic “has left many nursing professionals physically and mentally exhausted”, So that in surveys carried out in several countries 10% of them have assured that they will soon leave their jobs.

The director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, added that according to the statistics of the organization only two out of every five health workers in the world are fully vaccinated, and this proportion even drops to one in ten in African countries.

“We ask countries to protect and support these workers with safer conditions, better wages, more opportunities for job development and social protection.“, he claimed.