Migrating doctors

The negative impact of migration is a topic that seemingly can’t be discussed. Yet there’s a pressing need to do so, not least in relation to doctors and healthcare workers.

Recent figures project that the population of European states will in almost all cases decline in future years without inward migration. In other words, unless workers are brought into these countries dire consequences will follow.

Critical

One of the most critical areas is healthcare. Overseas doctors are said to be crucial to the survival of the healthcare systems in all, or nearly all, European countries.

According to an OECD review of twenty European countries, the proportion of foreign-trained doctors ranges from under 1 per cent of those practicing in Lithuania to a massive 44 per cent in Norway.

Embarrassment

Britain is fourth highest, at 32 per cent. Almost one in three of NHS doctors were not trained here, showing that Britain cannot look after its own health. As a country which pioneered many aspects of healthcare, including medical training, this should be a source of national shame and embarrassment.

The reduction in medical training places in Britain is deliberately preventing qualified and able young Britons from training to be doctors. If they were trained, there would be far less need to import doctors.

‘Migrating doctors come from countries who need them.’

And these migrating doctors have not come from countries richer than Britain with a surplus. They come, as everyone knows but doesn’t want to admit, from poor countries, who need the doctors they expend precious resources to train, far more than we do.

This is the opposite of what we like to think of as “aid”. Poor countries are training doctors for richer countries. This should be at the forefront of discussion when it’s claimed that European countries are doomed unless migration is expanded.