



It seems formidable for the people who want to pursue the healthcare profession in the UK as 32% of the NHS’ employees are from non-European countries.

In the late 1940s, the UK’s healthcare system was poor as only rich people could get access to it. Therefore, Nye Bevan came up with the idea of the NHS which was beneficial to both healthcare professionals and patients. Due to its excellence, the NHS gained the attraction of international healthcare professionals. Consequently, the healthcare professionals from across the world began to migrate to the UK from places such as Pakistan, India, China and Bangladesh.

The number of migrants that arrived in the UK after the advent of the NHS has doubled which has been putting a lot of competition regarding jobs between British citizens and the immigrants. However, the British Government doesn’t seem to have any worries about this situation as Britain saves up £14.5m by recruiting international healthcare professionals as a recent report by Migration Watch suggests that the British Government doesn’t pay for their clinical training. Clinical training is the very essential phase of medical studies as it teaches medical students how to deal with the situations that involve surgical procedures for treatments.

Although there are a number of causes of immigration, we as global citizens try to ignore them and we never think what made migrants leave their homeland. Some of the reasons behind the immigration include war, crippled economies and insufficient natural resources as well as artificial resources. Artificial resources are vital for a booming economy and it includes the things that we need in our daily lives like houses, electronics and medicines. Engineers use artificial resources to generate electricity, teachers use artificial resources such as tables, chairs and pens to teach their students and doctors use artificial resources such as stethoscopes, medicines and scalpels to treat their patients. Without these artificial resources, a country will be penniless. Unfortunately, in places like Syria, the infrastructure has been demolished due to the Civil War that started nearly half a decade ago and therefore, Syria lack artificial resources. Due to this shortage, Syria also lack medical staff as they don’t have enough equipments and money to run hospitals and clinics. There are many countries like Syria which have been through a lot of problems such as war, hunger and poverty.

Millions of migrants have been living in different countries of the world and helping their new countries to build a tremendous economy. For example, Sir Maghdi Yacoub, the renowned heart surgeon was trained and born in Egypt. He started his career at Harefield hospital which is located in London in 1973 as a heart surgeon and he performed the first open heart surgery in Nigeria in 1974.

An independent councillor Mrs Davidson said, “We believe, from speaking to people on the ground, that many of the refugees are health refugees”. In a nutshell, Mrs Davidson wants refugees to fulfil the vacancy of health care professional in the north of the UK as the UK faces health care professional crisis in places such as Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. This news came into focus of people when thousands of health workers showed their interest of leaving their jobs. General secretory of UNISON, Dave Prentis blamed ministers for this loss as he told the Mirror, “Ministers wasted a huge amount on a costly reorganisation the NHS did not need”. The main reason for this mass departure of health staff from the UK is that countries like USA, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have been offering good wages to health workers. This mass departure of health workers has left the UK with the shortage of health staff. Hence, UK has no choice but to recruit migrants.

Countries like Sierra Leone also face the healthcare professionals crisis since half of the health care professionals of Sierra Leone migrated to the UK. As the result of this, the country is only left with 142 health care professionals who were unable to control Ebola outbreak in that region in 2012 as there weren’t enough health care professionals. The Government knew that Sierra Leone’s health care system had collapsed due to migration but the UK Government showed no pity. Instead of inviting them over to work for NHS, the UK Government should have given them donations so they could continue their work in their country.

Nevertheless, it also implies that only the migrants who have good financial and educational background, are applicable for good jobs. It suggests that if you are a migrant and haven’t got education from some prestigious university, you wouldn’t be able to make adequate amount of money to look after your family.

For example, Syrian refugees have been struggling to get decent jobs in foreign countries such as Germany, France, Sweden and Austria but only the refugees who are literate, have been getting quite good jobs. There are many organizations that help refugees and migrants by teaching them English and informing them about laws and order of the country such as ROSE. ROSE is an organization that operates in the UK. It provides all kind of information that can help refugees and asylum seekers to restart their new lives. ROSE helps migrants who are capable to do health care work to register to the relevant registration body for their profession before they can work.

Is it not unfair for those who don’t have respectable education? I think it is because if people are illiterate, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have dreams to live their lives up to their standards.

No doubt NHS has been like a second home to many migrants as it has been helping them to achieve their goals and aims through NHS recruitment process. But it also raises many questions such as why can’t the UK Government fulfil young doctors’ needs or requirements? And what kind of policies are the UK Government using to keep NHS staff? As we all know, the British people voted for Brexit which means UK is no longer a part of the EU. Now, what will be the future of international health care workers? Especially the European workers who work for the NHS. Or will they leave the NHS? as The Guardian suggests the terrifying prospect that we will face the greatest shortage of NHS workers in our history after Brexit.