Health-care systems in developed countries rely heavily on immigrant workers, many from poorer nations—to keep them running.
Figures from New American Economy, a research and advocacy organization, show that 16.5 percent of all health-care workers in the United States are immigrants, with even greater representation in specific fields such as home health aid, where nearly 37 percent of workers are immigrants. And perhaps no place has played as large a role in this as the Philippines, which for decades has provided the nurses, porters, and aides who have formed the crucial infrastructure of hospitals, clinics, and other health-care facilities in wealthier parts of the world.
“Without the immigrant population right now serving in health care, the majority of these health-care industries would probably collapse,” Leo-Felix Jurado, the chair of the Nursing Department at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, and executive director of the Philippine Nurses Association of America, said.
The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the fragility and inequity baked into systems and societies around the world, among them the pipeline that has consistently brought health-care workers from poorer countries to richer ones. Even before the pandemic, the Philippines had been suffering from a shortfall of nurses in the tens of thousands. This deficit has been exacerbated by the coronavirus as nurses, as well as leading doctors, have been dying in startling numbers, Oscar Tinio, of the Philippine Medical Association, in Manila, explained.
The need is so great that this month the government moved to restrict some nurses from working abroad. And overseas, Filipino nurses have found themselves thrust into medical systems—even those in more developed, and theoretically more capable, countries—that have proved ill-prepared to handle a public-health crisis on the scale of what the coronavirus has brought.
Six Filipino nurses have died in the U.S. because of complications from COVID-19, according to the Philippines embassy in Washington, D.C. The toll is higher in Britain: Twenty-two Filipino nurses and hospital workers employed by the NHS have died. These numbers are almost certain to rise as countries struggle to bring the pandemic under control.
“They were invisible pre-COVID,” Jean Encinas-Franco, an assistant political-science professor at the University of the Philippines said of these nurses. Now “they have become collateral damage for governments that are ill-prepared to fight this pandemic.” The praise given in recent weeks often “legitimizes the suffering and sacrifice that they are experiencing abroad,” underpayment, employment scams, and racism in the workplace.
Significantly better pay compared with what they would make at home remains the main driver for many Filipinos to seek nursing employment abroad. Nearly 70,000 nurses migrated from the Philippines for work from 2008 to 2012, government data show, and in 2017, the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found some 145,800 Filipinos working as registered nurses in the United States. In Britain, just over 18,500 Filipinos work for the National Health Service, according to a parliamentary report published last year. Significant populations of Filipino nurses also work in Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, and in Japan, caring for the country’s aging population. Spain this month said it would fast-track Filipino nurses’ entry into its workforce to prop up its strained health-care system.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-frailty-and-inequality-of-the-global-nurse-pipeline/ar-BB13qwJs?ocid=spartandhp
Figures from New American Economy, a research and advocacy organization, show that 16.5 percent of all health-care workers in the United States are immigrants, with even greater representation in specific fields such as home health aid, where nearly 37 percent of workers are immigrants. And perhaps no place has played as large a role in this as the Philippines, which for decades has provided the nurses, porters, and aides who have formed the crucial infrastructure of hospitals, clinics, and other health-care facilities in wealthier parts of the world.
“Without the immigrant population right now serving in health care, the majority of these health-care industries would probably collapse,” Leo-Felix Jurado, the chair of the Nursing Department at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, and executive director of the Philippine Nurses Association of America, said.
The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the fragility and inequity baked into systems and societies around the world, among them the pipeline that has consistently brought health-care workers from poorer countries to richer ones. Even before the pandemic, the Philippines had been suffering from a shortfall of nurses in the tens of thousands. This deficit has been exacerbated by the coronavirus as nurses, as well as leading doctors, have been dying in startling numbers, Oscar Tinio, of the Philippine Medical Association, in Manila, explained.
The need is so great that this month the government moved to restrict some nurses from working abroad. And overseas, Filipino nurses have found themselves thrust into medical systems—even those in more developed, and theoretically more capable, countries—that have proved ill-prepared to handle a public-health crisis on the scale of what the coronavirus has brought.
Six Filipino nurses have died in the U.S. because of complications from COVID-19, according to the Philippines embassy in Washington, D.C. The toll is higher in Britain: Twenty-two Filipino nurses and hospital workers employed by the NHS have died. These numbers are almost certain to rise as countries struggle to bring the pandemic under control.
“They were invisible pre-COVID,” Jean Encinas-Franco, an assistant political-science professor at the University of the Philippines said of these nurses. Now “they have become collateral damage for governments that are ill-prepared to fight this pandemic.” The praise given in recent weeks often “legitimizes the suffering and sacrifice that they are experiencing abroad,” underpayment, employment scams, and racism in the workplace.
Significantly better pay compared with what they would make at home remains the main driver for many Filipinos to seek nursing employment abroad. Nearly 70,000 nurses migrated from the Philippines for work from 2008 to 2012, government data show, and in 2017, the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found some 145,800 Filipinos working as registered nurses in the United States. In Britain, just over 18,500 Filipinos work for the National Health Service, according to a parliamentary report published last year. Significant populations of Filipino nurses also work in Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, and in Japan, caring for the country’s aging population. Spain this month said it would fast-track Filipino nurses’ entry into its workforce to prop up its strained health-care system.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-frailty-and-inequality-of-the-global-nurse-pipeline/ar-BB13qwJs?ocid=spartandhp
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