The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a drastic depletion of the healthcare workforce in wealthy nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, leading to an aggressive recruitment drive for medical workers from developing countries. The urgency of the situation and the pull of high-income nations has raised ethical questions about the recruitment of healthcare workers from countries with weak health systems. The International Council of Nurses has expressed concern that developing countries can least afford to lose their nurses. Recruitment firms have reported a surge in demand for nurses from African nations, the Philippines, and the Caribbean, with an estimated 10,000 foreign nurses waiting for interviews at American embassies worldwide to obtain visas to work in the United States. The number of international nurses registering to work in the United Kingdom has also increased significantly since the middle of 2020, with as many as half of the nurses in some units in the Philippines having an application in process to work abroad.
As the pandemic enters its third year and infections surge, the shortage of healthcare workers is a growing concern worldwide. The W.H.O has recorded strikes and other labor action by healthcare workers in over 80 countries in the past year. The depletion of the healthcare workforce has come at a cost to patient care, with burnout and frustration driving many healthcare workers to quit.
European and North American countries have created immigration fast-tracks for healthcare workers and expedited the process of recognizing foreign qualifications. The British government introduced a “health and care visa” program in 2020, which targets and fast-tracks foreign healthcare workers to fill staffing vacancies, while Canada has eased language requirements for residency and expedited the process of recognizing foreign-trained nurses' qualifications. Germany is allowing foreign-trained doctors to move directly into assistant physician positions, and Japan is offering a pathway to residency for temporary aged-care workers.
The aggressive recruitment of healthcare workers from developing countries has raised ethical concerns, with some experts calling for more investment in domestic healthcare systems to retain and attract medical personnel. In 2010, the member states of the W.H.O. adopted a Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, which sought to address the exodus of nurses and doctors from sub-Saharan Africa. African governments have expressed frustration at losing doctors and nurses educated with public funds to countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom for salaries their home countries could never hope to match
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