Most of the new doctors and nurses in UK came from India, says study
Five Romanian doctors under the scanner for reusing medical implants from dead patients.
A new study has said that a majority of care workers who were sponsored for skilled work visas in the UK in 2022 came from non-EU countries, with maximum coming from India and just one per cent from the EU countries.
The report has been made by Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. The country's immigration system brought unprecedented number of workers from overseas into health and care workforce in the year 2022-2023, it said.
India was the top country of nationality for newly-recruited overseas doctors (20 per cent) and nurses (46 per cent). India was followed by Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, said the study.
India (33 per cent) was also among top countries of citizenship for workers using Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) in 2022, followed by Zimbabwe and Nigeria.
From 2017, recruitment of non-EU citizens on skilled work visas increased in the health and care sector against a backdrop of staff shortages.
There was a particularly sharp increase in 2021 and 2022.
According to Britain's Office for National Statistics (ONS), vacancies in the UK's health and social work sector peaked at 217,000 in July and September 2022. It fell somewhat in late 2022 and early 2023.
Following this, the UK immigration system admitted unprecedented numbers of overseas health and care workers in the year ending March 2023. In the year to March, 57,700 care workers received skilled work visas, according to the report.
The study was commissioned by the employment group ReWage. It warned that there was a risk of UK becoming too dependent on overseas care workers. Nearly 58,000 visas were issued for the sector last year.
According to the official figures, overall migration into the UK for 2022 was at 606,000. This was a 24 per cent increase on the previous high of 488,000 the year before.
"Health and care employers have benefited a lot from international recruitment. But relying this much on overseas recruits also brings risks," Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, was cited as saying in The Guardian.
Dr Sumption said care workers on temporary visas are vulnerable to exploitation and "the rapid growth in overseas recruitments makes monitoring pay and conditions a real challenge". The report comes with consultant doctors in Britain set to go on strike on July 20 and 21 for better pay.
(With inputs from agencies)
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