India is about to face the largest shortage of nurses in the international after Bangladesh, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), as many more of those health workers may have migrated overseas or have retired than government statistics suggest.
Thousands of migrant Indian nurses are battling the coronavirus pandemic inside the US, UK and the Middle East, amongst other locations, even as there is a shortage of such employees in India.
There are simply 1.7 nurses according to 1,000 human beings in India, according to Union fitness ministry facts. That’s a long way much less than the WHO’s prescribed minimal of three. In March, the government advised the Rajya Sabha that India has 3.07 million registered nursing employees, which include nurses, midwives and nursing assistants.
Experts, however, declare the government’s statistics doesn’t provide the true photograph. “The numbers available with the authorities may be deceptive as the Indian Nursing Council has now not yet completed the stay on-line registry. Nurses who’ve retired, died or are running distant places—this kind of classes may be part of to be had facts,” said Thankam Gomez, president, Association of Nurse Executives (India).
Nurses in India are overworked, underpaid and often undervalued, forcing heaps of them to migrate foreign places every 12 months looking for better-paying jobs. “Indian nurses rather appear in all countries outdoor India. This shows that beneath better circumstances and experiential mastering, our nurses can do an exceptional job,” she stated.
The contemporary fitness disaster has delivered to the fore the shortage of nurses, Gomez stated, including that India’s woes may also get worse if covid-19 cases surge.
An April record on state of the sector’s nursing posted collectively with the aid of WHO and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) stated that the availability of a nursing group of workers should worsen as most important suppliers of nursing personnel globally—the Philippines and India—are facing probably massive “emerging shortages” within their personal national health offerings.
“This is no matter the truth that both countries teach more fitness specialists than they need, inside the know-how that many will work overseas,” said Howard Catton, head of ICN.
The Indian Nursing Council has these days proposed a go out exam for registration after research for nurses. “We want to feature talent-based totally competency assessment as properly earlier than a scholar nurse can exercise as a registered nurse,” said Gomez.
