Nurses, doctors leave Balkans to work in Germany
As Central-Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, has been experiencing doctors migrating to the UK, France and Germany from 2005, recently there is a new shift towards the Balkans.
They are Losing Best Experts
With their economies still recovering from a decade of political and economic turmoil in the 1990s, and unemployment in double-digits, the former Yugoslav republics have few funds to spend on healthcare. Working conditions are poor and expensive modern medical equipment scarce.
That is why a call by Germany in January last year for foreign workers to come was met with a massive response. Europe’s biggest economy has vacancies for 10,000 nurses and 2,000 doctors, with some 40,000 registered doctors due to retire by 2021.
According to the German Medical Association, 2,365 doctors from the seven countries that make up former Yugoslavia were registered in Germany last year, including 864 from Serbia.
“We are losing our best experts,” said Zoran Savic, the president of Serbia’s medical workers’ trade union. “Younger doctors will fill in their places but it takes a minimum 10 years to educate a specialist physician.”
source: along Reuters.com
