WHO: “Poor countries have lost their health workers to rich countries”

SHAFAQNA TURKEY – The World Health Organization (WHO), explaining that medical workers from poor countries have moved to rich countries, said that hundreds of thousands of employees left their profession due to burnout and depression after Covid-19.

Even before the pandemic, nurses and other medical personnel tended to leave parts of Africa or Southeast Asia in search of better opportunities, the UN health agency said, but this is accelerating as global competition intensifies.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, said: “Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems are understaffed. Many of them are losing their healthcare workers due to international migration,” he said.

Eight more countries added to WHO list of fragile countries

Ghebreyesus said that this situation is occurring especially when poor countries try to make up for the loss of staff caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, sometimes with active recruitment, and that health workers increasingly prefer richer countries.

It was also announced that eight more countries have been added to the WHO final list published in 2020. These countries were declared Comoros, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Laos, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

“Thousands of healthcare workers left the profession due to burnout and depression”

Jim Campbell, Director of Health Human Resources at WHO, also told reporters that reassurance is important so that countries on the WHO list “can continue to recover and recover from the epidemic without additional loss of workers due to migration.”

He also stated that approximately 115,000 healthcare workers worldwide have died due to Covid during the pandemic, but many have left their profession due to burnout and depression. MAJORITY