A recent World Migration Report states that a large number of Caribbean nurses migrated to developed countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
According to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data, the top five countries in terms of emigration of nurses are all from the Caribbean: Haiti leads with an expatriation rate of 94 percent, followed by Jamaica at 87.7 percent, Grenada 87.6 percent, St Vincent and the Grenadines 81.6 percent and Guyana 81.1 percent.
India is the top country of origin of migrant doctors to OECD countries, with more than 56,000 Indian doctors in these countries. India also figures in sixth place in the expatriation of nurses to OECD countries (about 23,000). In terms of percentages, however, these figures constitute just eight percent and three percent respectively of the doctor and nurse population in India, comfortingly low compared to some of the small countries severely affected by emigration of doctors such as Mozambique (7 percent) and Angola (70 percent)
The World Migration Report talks about the problem of “medical brain drain” especially in African countries.
