From India to South America: the hunt is on for nurses, one in ten is from abroad

Italy is joining the great race to find nurses around the world, who are currently the most precious health workers because they are the ones most in short supply, and not only in Italy. We need at least 65,000 and soon at least 10,000 will arrive from India thanks to the agreement that the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci is putting on the ground in these very weeks with the Indian government, while a few thousand more will arrive on the basis of regional initiatives, such as that of Lombardy, which is expecting the first 200 Argentinean nurses shortly, to be followed by others from Paraguay, or the 'Samaritanus care' project of the 1370 religious health facilities associated with Aris and Uneba (for a total of 115,000 beds) that send more than a thousand a year trained by Catholic universities to developing countries in Nigeria, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Argentina, Peru and India.

There are already more than 38,000 foreign nurses in Italy, with Romanians (12,000) and Poles (2,000) among the most present, followed by Indians and Albanians (over 1,800 each) and Peruvians (1,500). However, with the new arrivals, the number is set to rise to at least 50,000 by 2025, meaning that more than one nurse in ten (460,000 registered nurses) will come from outside Italy and will have to learn Italian. Here the language and the recognition of qualifications from abroad are the biggest stumbling blocks. On these two points, the operational protocol on which the Ministry of Health is working after the recent G7 Health Gala in Ancona, where Schillaci met the Indian deputy minister, envisages Italian courses to be organised already in India with the support of the universities and the consulate (candidates will have to obtain a B1 certificate of knowledge of the Italian language), while for qualifications, recognition will be automatic since two training courses have been identified in India that meet Italian requirements where at least a three-year degree is required. These are the Bachelor in science of nursing (4 years, nursing degree) and the diploma in general nursing and midwifery (between 3 years and 3 and a half years).

But how many will arrive? For Schillaci it will start 'with about 10,000', although the real need will be identified by 15 November when the regions will communicate their shortages to the ministry. Which, for its part, will immediately make this Indian 'channel' available with the Regions' commitment to then put in place aid and anti-bureaucracy mechanisms for the search for accommodation and the eventual reunification of families. "As Regions, we consider this option of Indian nurses as a buffer situation and we invite them to look at all nationalities. The real issue remains, however," warns Raffaele Donini, who coordinates the Regions' health councillors, "that of making this profession attractive again". In the meantime, the first 200 Argentinean nurses will arrive in Lombardy's hospitals in the early months of 2025, as a result of an agreement between the Region and the Italian University Institute of Rosario (Iunir): "The mistakes that were made in the past put us in the position of having to resort to these extraordinary instruments that we are pursuing," confirms Attilio Fontana, governor of Lombardy. Which in all counts on attracting between 2500 and 3000 foreign nurses

But as we have said, we are not the only ones desperately searching for nurses: just think of the case of Ireland, which, thanks to attractive welfare mechanisms, now already has 50% of its nurses coming from abroad, or the case of Germany, which, after knocking on the door of the Philippines, has in recent days been discussing an agreement with the Indian government to increase the number of visas from India from 20,000 to 90,000, and among these the lion's share will be nurses. The crux of the problem in most western countries is in fact the low attractiveness of this exhausting and demanding profession, which in Italy guarantees a starting salary of 1600-1700 euro that increases little at the end of the career. Hence the flight of our nurses abroad: it is estimated that at least 15,000 have fled in three years, 6,000 of them in 2023 alone, in search of better conditions. Minister Schillaci is working to improve nurses' salaries and careers (see other article below), but in the meantime the flight continues, and that is why people are looking abroad for this search, which increasingly resembles a race between countries and in which Italy is not at all favoured.