/ 17 September 2008

UK to stop poaching doctors

Britain will stop recruiting South African doctors and nurses through a fast-track immigration system this November, but it will continue to hire specialists such as neurologists, audiologists and pathologists.

This week the British Home Office published a list of professionals who will no longer be recruited from outside the European Union. It includes secondary school teachers, social workers, IT specialists, architects and most skilled construction workers. The move will reduce the number of skilled jobs in Britain open to non-EU migrants from one million to 700 000.

From next month it will be harder for such professionals from outside the EU to get work permits: nurses already employed by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, for instance, will find it difficult renew their permits.

Kgosi Letlape, chairperson of the South African Medical Association, was not impressed by the move which, he said is the culmination of negotiations between the South African and UK governments over the practice of recruiting from South Africa and the developing world.

”They are responding to political pressures,” he said. ”It is erroneous for people to think they can keep people in an environment in which they are not happy.”

Letlape said doctors are not only emigrating; some are leaving the profession because they are overworked and frustrated.

He pointed out that the UK is still short of such professionals. ”Why stop healthcare workers from other countries serving your health system?”

The decision to exclude non-EU doctors and nurses from working in the UK brings to an end more than 50 years of the UK’s reliance on the recruitment of overseas staff to keep hospitals and surgeries operating.

A report prepared by the Home Office’s advisory committee says this change reflects the sharp increase in training programmes for nurses and doctors in Britain.

Under the new regime, employers will be required to submit sufficient evidence that positions have been advertised. They will be asked to furnish the Home Office with details of those who have applied, and reasons no resident national could be appointed to the post.

The move might result in South Africa retaining more health professionals, although many are looking to other countries for jobs.

A 2006 study by the Centre for Global Development found that more than 5 000 South African nurses and at least 12 000 health professionals, such as pharmacists, radiographers and doctors, were employed abroad.

No comment could be obtained from the national health department.

Additional reporting by The Guardian