The British government announced a ‘historic’ health workforce plan on June 30, aiming to address the chronic shortage of health workers over the next 15 years. The plan foresees an investment of £2.4 billion (over USD 3 billion) in the next five years to boost apprenticeships and medical education in England. However, health workers’ organizations and activists have criticized it for ignoring workplace rights-related problems.
Activists say the plan doesn’t address the demands of health workers trade unions for salary increases to meet cuts and freezes implemented over past years. These grievances led to the wave of strikes that spread throughout the NHS over the past months.
Health workers’ organizations agree that improving working conditions and ensuring fair raises for workers is essential to tackle the ongoing health workforce shortage. According to the latest National Health Service (NHS) data, there are over 112,000 vacancies in the health system in England. This number could rise to as much as 360,000 unless decisive action is taken immediately. Activists warn that this action must include a fair salary increase and investment in existing workplaces to retain both old and new workers.
To truly fix the mess the government has created, we need:
🔵An inflation-busting 15% pay rise for staff
🔵Health spending that matches France & Germany – at least £30bn more per year
🔵Reversal of the marketisation of health
🔵Proper investment in public health & social care— Just Treatment 💊 (@JustTreatment) June 30, 2023
The United Kingdom is not the only country in the Global North that has recently faced the consequences of ignoring health workers’ needs. Concerns about medical deserts and plummeting numbers of health workers have been expressed in France, Germany, Canada, the United States, and others. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that without significant policy changes, the US will experience a yearly deficit of 203,000 nurses through 2026.
In addition to thousands of health workers leaving the sector due to pressures that were increased by the COVID-19 pandemic, high income countries’ governments are also struggling with an aging health workforce. But while both governments and corporate media are finally admitting the problem is real, the solutions on the table fail to acknowledge the role of decades of austerity policies which exacerbated the problem.
Read | Health worker shortage in Global South cannot be resolved by tepid mechanisms and ban
Apart from the plan announced in the UK, the solutions proposed still heavily rely on international recruitment, despite warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) about disastrous shortages of health workers in the Global South. While Europe faces a high number of vacancies in the health sector, it is also home to the largest number of health workers globally. In 2020, WHO’s European region had 3.4 million physicians and 7.4 million nurses, while the United Nations health agency’s African region had only 300,000 medical doctors and 1.2 million nurses.
Despite this discrepancy, Europe and North America continue to consider active international recruitment of health workers as a viable solution to their problems, disregarding the potential effects it might have on other health systems. Alongside the disregard for existing workers’ demands, plans like the one brought forward by Rishi Sunak’s government are unlikely to resolve the problem and may instead fuel further migration of health workers from the Global South.
People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here
