Health-related Millennium Development Goals such as the reduction
of child and maternal mortality will be difficult to achieve in
many developing and developed parts of the world as a result of
severe shortages of health workers, IOM has established through new
research.

Rural areas in developing countries are especially affected by
the lack of health workers but some European countries are also
feeling the brunt of health worker mobility. A combination of
structural push and pull factors facilitates the continuous
movement of health workers away from the rural to the urban areas
and across borders to pursue better working and living
conditions.

These and other research findings are being presented during an
international conference on "Ensuring Tomorrow's Health: Workforce
Planning and Mobility" being held in the Belgian capital Brussels
under the auspices of the Polish EU Presidency.

The event which ends today and organized by IOM, the European
Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the Centre for
Health Services & Nursing at the Catholic University Leuven,
has brought together about 160 representatives of academic
institutions, professional associations, governments, the European
Commission and the international community to share the findings of
three large EC-funded research projects, including IOM’s.

One key finding in the IOM research which was carried out in 25
countries around the world is the lack of on-going monitoring by
governments of health professionals' mobility.

"Health systems usually don't keep track of who is leaving and
where they have gone. If we don't know what is happening on this
front, we cannot develop effective policies or responses to tackle
the issue," said Davide Mosca, Director of IOM’s Migration
Health Division.

Two countries with very high numbers of their health
professionals working abroad are India and the Philippines. Of the
130,000 Filipino health professionals employed in other countries,
85 per cent of them are nurses, whilst out of the 100,000 Indian
health workers abroad, 65 per cent of them are doctors and 26 per
cent of them nurses. Both countries have higher than regional
averages of under-five child mortality rates.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria and Romania are being actively targeted as
source countries for health professionals since their accession to
the European Union by other European Union countries.

Imelda Nicolas, Secretary of the Commission on Filipinos
Overseas (CFO) highlighted the need for bilateral agreements
between countries of origin and destination which regulate the
conditions in which health workers migrate and work; the forging of
North-South hospital-to-hospital partnerships and establishing
flexible circular migration schemes that allow overseas health
workers to return to their home countries and integrate back into
local health systems.

For further information, please contact:

Barbara Rijks

IOM Geneva

Tel: + 41 22 717 9270/+ 41 79 912 8172

E-mail: "mailto:brijks@iom.int">brijks@iom.int

or

Roumyana Petrova-Benedict

IOM Brussels

Tel: +32 475 62 77 09

E-mail: "mailto:rpetrovabenedict@iom.int">rpetrovabenedict@iom.int