More Ghanaian nurses in NHS than in Ghana

Warning of health staff shortage in Africa as UK seeks to plug vacancies.

By Micah McLean

THERE 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 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

CONCERN: New nursing recruits from Ghana rose 1,328 per cent between 2019 and 2022 (photo: Getty Images) their qualifications from overseas, including 8,241 from Nigeria, 4,192 from Zimbabwe and 1,719 from South Africa.

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