Mad Rush Of Nurses In Search Of Greener Pastures Overseas; A Cause For Worry
What is happening? Nurses abandoning their motherland and running after lucrative jobs in other countries. Sometimes the jobs they land do not even relate to their field of study. It is all about the desperate desire for financial gain to fend for their families?
This is a heartbreaking issue that requires a lasting solution.
Ghanaian citizens traveling overseas in search of greener pastures has almost become a pastime for undertakers, and here the exodus transcends the health sector to every professional field because essentially it is a miscellaneous crowd that is leaving our shores. The majority of Ghanaians within the working-class is very eager to travel abroad due to economic hardships.
For instance, in 2022 alone, data analysis indicates that the number of applicants who applied for the American Visa Lottery increased compared to other years.
Most of the applicants according to the agents were health professionals who want to travel overseas in search of better jobs.
Tony Jaie’s Tour Agency owned by Anthony Yeboah in an exclusive interview with The Ghana Report in 2022 also asserted that “the number of applicants for the American Visa Lottery has really increased this year as compared to the previous years”
“In 2021, I had only 56 applicants for the American Visa Lottery but this year, over 1,000 applicants have registered so far”.
When asked if he had any idea concerning the sharp increment of applicants for the year in question, he said, “Most of the applicants I have engaged so far are complaining about the hardship in Ghana now. I have some applicants who even registered for their entire family members because they want to leave the country and seek greener pastures elsewhere”.
“Formerly, an average of 300 people go to the UK Embassy for Visa per day but this year alone, about 2,000 people applied for visas at the Embassy on a daily basis” he noted.
The Medical and Dental Council in October 2022 also lamented that the majority of medical professionals are leaving the country to search for new opportunities abroad as the economy bites harder and that contributed to the vast increment of applicants in 2022.
Howard Catton, the head of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) in the UK in an interview with BBC in 2023 affirmed that many specialist nurses have left the West African country for better-paid jobs overseas with over 1,200 Ghanaian nurses joining the UK’s nursing register in 2022.
It seems the issue of nurses willing to travel overseas won’t go away anytime soon since problems such as poor conditions of service, poor remuneration, and workplace occupational hazards are disincentives.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number three aims to ensure the good health and well-being of citizens globally and relating that to the current situation in Ghana with nurses running out of the country, it means immunization will be of great challenge in Ghana.
When that happens, it will lead to a high mortality rate in the country as well, that is, if the grim forecast has not already cast a shadow on the system.
Like James Sinegal will say, “Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for a good business” and indeed if nurses are well paid and given the necessary capacity to facilitate their work, there will be no need for them leaving their own country.
The Ministry of Health headed by Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu as a matter of urgency should kindly intervene in the situation because it’s getting out of hand. This approach is relevant to all other sectors that are leaking like the health sector.
Regional Health Directorates are raising several alarms on the incident and it is time the government takes decisive steps on this burning issue.
The trauma of unemployment through lack of juicy payment is the contributing factor to the mass migration of all kinds of working professionals to developed countries like Canada, the United Kingdom(UK), Norway, Germany, the United States (US), etc. in search of better jobs.