Ghana patients in danger as nurses head for NHS in UK

Howard Catton from the International Council of Nurses (ICN) is concerned about the scale of the numbers leaving countries like Ghana.

“All our critical care nurses, our experienced nurses, have gone

If we lose public health nurses, then the babies that have to be immunised will not get their immunisation, and we are going to have babies die,” he told the BBC.

Fewer nurses in Ghana means that critical care for patients there is being affected, medics say

Ghana is on the World Health Organization’s list of 55 vulnerable countries, which have low numbers of nurses per head of population

He told the BBC that he believed such deals were “trying to create a veneer of ethical respectability rather than a proper reflection of the true costs to the countries which are losing their nurses”.

The WHO’s Director of Health Workforce, Jim Campbell, explained to the BBC that Brexit had been a factor in the UK turning to African countries for nurses to fill NHS vacancies.