World short of six
million nurses, WHO says
As COVID-19 captures global
headlines, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Tuesday that the world
needs nearly six million nurses.
The UN s health agency along with partners Nursing Now and
the International Council of Nurses (ICN) underscored in a report the crucial
role played by nurses, who make up more than half of all health workers
worldwide.
"Nurses are the backbone of any health system," WHO
chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
"Today, many nurses find themselves on the frontline in the
battle against COVID-19," he noted, adding that it was vital they
"get the support they need to keep the world healthy."
The report said that there are just under 28 million nurses on
the planet.
In the five years leading up to 2018, the number grew by 4.7
million.
"But this still leaves a global shortfall of 5.9
million," the WHO said, pointing out that the greatest gaps were in poorer
countries in Africa, southeast Asia, the Middle East and parts of South
America.
The report urged countries to identify gaps in their nursing
workforce and invest in nursing education, jobs and leadership.
ICN chief executive Howard Catton told a virtual briefing that
infection rates, medication errors and mortality rates "are all higher
where there are too few nurses".
Furthermore, "shortages exhaust our current nursing
workforce", he added.
In fighting the pandemic, Mary Watkins, who co-chaired the
report for Nursing Now, called for urgent investment in virus tests for
healthcare workers.
"We have a very high proportion of healthcare workers not
going to work because they re afraid that they ve been infected and
that they can t prove that they have not got the infection -- or that
they ve had it, and they re over it," she said.
Catton said that 23 nurses had died in Italy and cited figures
suggesting that around 100 health workers had died around the world.
Meanwhile he said there were reports of nine percent of health
workers being infected in Italy and "we re now hearing of rates of
infections up to 14 percent in Spain".
He also cited reports of "completely unacceptable and
reprehensible" attacks on health workers battling COVID-19, largely due to
ignorance about their work, combined with countries not doing enough to protect
them.
"COVID is putting it into a very stark lens for us
all," he said, though he welcomed the growing appreciation in some
countries of nurse s work.
Catton said that could help change perceptions of the value of
nursing -- which in turn might help make it a more attractive profession.
Beyond COVID-19, Watkins said many wealthier countries were not
producing enough nurses to meet their own healthcare needs, and were therefore
reliant on migration, exacerbating shortages in poorer countries.
"Eighty percent of the world s nurses only currently
serve 50 percent of the world s population," she noted.
Catton warned of risks that richer countries would rely on the
Philippines and India to "supply the world with nurses", which could
lead to significant shortages in India.
The experts said nursing remains female-dominated and needed to
recruit more men.
"There is clear evidence that where there are more men in
any profession in the world, the pay and the terms and conditions
improve," Watkins said.
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