12 | THE VOICE APRIL 2023
News Feature
More Ghanaian nurses in NHS than in Ghana Warning of health staff shortage in Africa as UK seeks to plug vacancies. By Micah McLean
T
HERE ARE more Ghanaian nurses working in the NHS than in Ghana, raising concerns about health worker shortage in the west African country. A House of Commons report has found more than 3,000 health professionals had left Ghana for the UK in each of the three years to 2021. The proportion of Africanborn NHS staff almost doubled from 1.8 per cent to 3.1 per cent since 2016, with Botswana and Kenya also featuring heavily. Numbers have risen sharply following recruitment campaigns in African countries by UK-based agencies, as the NHS tries to fill 48,000 nurse vacancies. Health unions say nurses are leaving the NHS in droves because of poor pay and stressful working conditions in British hospitals. While African nurses are helping to plug the gap, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says sub-Saharan Africa’s own healthcare crisis will intensify
as it estimates the region will be short of 5.3 million health workers by 2030. The chair of the Ghana Nurses Association (GNA) said the recruitment of nurses from the subcontinent was a problem. Martha Nugent, a specialist palliative care nurse, told The Voice: “If your expertise is all being exported, the health system will suffer. “What we need is support to develop our health system, and working within a better health system makes you happy and you become more committed. “Money or no money you will stay within a system where you feel comfortable. “It’s not easy to leave your home country to come aboard but circumstances make you want to move on to be able to support your family.” Last year, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) raised concerns that the NHS was recruiting nurses from countries which faced their own shortage of nurses. RCN figures showed new nursing recruits
CONCERN: New nursing recruits from Ghana rose 1,328 per cent between 2019 and 2022 (photo: Getty Images)
from Ghana rose 1,328 per cent between 2019 and 2022, while nurses from Nigeria rose 990 per cent between 2021 and 2022. NHS nurse recruitment from these countries was in breach of WHO’s Global Code of Practice, which stressed that “active” re-
cruitment of nurses from red-list countries should be avoided. The Nuffield Trust expressed concerns that in the six months to September 2022, more than 2,200 of new international nurses came from just two red-list countries alone — Nigeria and
Ghana. The Trust said a major contributor to the NHS crisis was the loss of European Union staff after Brexit. The NHS has also seen a rapid rise in the number of doctors recruited from Africa, with nearly 35 per cent having obtained
their qualifications from overseas, including 8,241 from Nigeria, 4,192 from Zimbabwe and 1,719 from South Africa. Watch the video on this topic on Micah McLean Talks YouTube channel
Logan blasts Met chief Rowley over institutional racism BRITAIN’S MOST well-known ex-cop blasted Sir Mark Rowley after the Metropolitan Police Commissioner refused to accept a report s findings that his force was institutionally racist. Retired police chief superintendent and former Black Police Association chair Leroy Logan said that the Met boss, pictured right, was engaging in “semantics” which meant that change was less likely. Speaking outside Scotland Yard on the day the review by Dame Louise Casey was released, Mr Logan fumed: “I’m so angry. [Sir Mark] doesn’t acknowledge that the narrative has to change from the top, because if he’s defensive, the rest of the Met will be defensive. “And that’s the thing.
The rest of the country will be defensive. And so you’re not going to even have the attitudinal changes that’s necessary. You’re not going to see the accountability and transparency that’s critical.” Sir Mark said he accepted his force had “institutional issues” but said the “label” of institutional racism was “politicised and ambiguous”. In 1999, Sir William Macpherson made a clear definition of institutional racism in his public inquiry report into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. The
Casey review found the Met to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic. The report found that Black officers were more likely to be discriminated against and were 81 per cent more likely to be investigated for misconduct. It concluded that “Black Londoners in particular remain over-policed. They are more likely to be stopped and searched, handcuffed, batoned and Tasered, are over-represented in many serious crimes, and when they are victims of crime, they are less satisfied with the service they receive than other Londoners. “There is now generational mistrust of the police among Black Londoners. Stop and search is currently deployed by the Met at the cost of legitimacy, trust and, therefore, consent.”
SCATHING: Former Black Police Association chair Leroy Logan
