Britain is cutting back on health care to vulnerable countries while hiring nurses, research shows
Britain has cut healthcare aid to some of the world’s vulnerable countries while recruiting thousands of their nurses in a “double whammy” for vulnerable healthcare systems, a new analysis has found.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which carried out the research, said Labor had a “duty” to restore aid cuts imposed by the previous government, and work to increase the domestic supply of nurses in Great Britain -Britain.
Direct UK aid for health-related projects between 2020 and 2023 in “red listThe countries – those with the most severe labor shortages – fell by almost 63%, from £484 million to £181 million.
Spending on projects designed to strengthen the healthcare workforce in those countries fell by 83%, from £24 million to £4 million.
At the same time, the number of nurses from these countries on the British national register has increased sharply. There were 11,386 registered in September 2020 and 32,543 in September 2024.
The Conservative government under Boris Johnson has made a £4 billion cut to the foreign aid budget, reducing spending from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5%. In last October’s budget, Labor kept government spending at this lower figure.
Prof. Nicola Ranger, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said: “Aid cuts may have been the previous government’s idea, but it is now this government’s duty to fix this.
“By keeping the aid target at a paltry 0.5% of GNI, Britain is failing to meet its international obligations, effectively worsening the chronic shortage of nursing staff in some of the world’s most underfunded healthcare systems.
“The Prime Minister promised ‘change’ when he was elected and that should include reversing the damage to aid budgets by cutting spending to 0.7%,” she said.
An abrupt end to UK funding for one project in 2021 meant ambulances in Sierra Leone ran out of fuel. patients could not reach the hospital for emergency treatment. “There is no doubt that there were fatalities as a result,” said a British health worker involved in the programme.
Ranger said: “Heavy recruitment from the same countries where we have run out of aid is a double whammy for some of the world’s most vulnerable healthcare systems. But it is also a damning indictment of the unwillingness of successive governments to properly fund and grow our own nursing profession.”
The 55 countries on the World Health Organization’s “red list” (formally known as the Health Worker Support and Protection List) include Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Somalia.
Other countries are not intended to actively recruit from red list countries, although staff from those countries are free to apply for vacancies elsewhere.
The RCN analysis also shows that the share of healthcare spending within the total UK aid budget has fallen from 16.7% in 2020 to 7.6% in 2023.
The analysis only looks at bilateral aid – directly between two countries. Some red list countries will also have received support from Britain through multilateral organizations such as the Global Fund and the World Health Organization.
A government spokesperson said: “The UK remains one of the most generous donors among the G7 and we are committed to reducing development spending to 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) as soon as fiscal conditions allow.
“We are working to address the global health worker shortage through our industry-leading multilateral healthcare investments. UK support to the World Bank and the Global Financing Facility is generating further investment in global health.”
The spokesperson said a code of practice for the international recruitment of health and social care staff ensured this was “ethical and sustainable”.