Social protection:
Health Worker Migration
ILO member of the Health Worker Migration Policy Initiative
International health worker migration has been a major concern of ILO constituents in the health sector in recent years. In response, the ILO launched the ongoing Action Programme on international health worker migration in 2006. ILO has also now joined the Health Worker Migration Policy Initiative, which brings together policy makers, technical experts and a variety of stakeholders.
This Initiative, launched in May 2007 under the umbrella of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, is a two-tiered group, with a high-level policy council and a technical working group. It aims at finding practical solutions to the problem of the increasing migration of health workers from developing to developed countries. The ILO Sectoral Activities Branch together with the ILO International Migration Programme support the work of the Initiative with their technical expertise on labour migration and migration in the health sector.
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Action programme on the international migration of health service workers: The supply side
International migration has become an accepted feature of globalized labour markets in health care, yet the effects of international migration of health-service workers on the nations supplying the workers are cause for concern. There is a growing shortage of health-care workers in developed countries. This shortage is being increasingly filled with migrant nurses and other health-care workers from developing countries. While migrant health workers are a source of remittances for their families and countries, migration affects supplying nations through a loss of qualified and experienced performers, weakening national health systems capacity in providing quality health care.. The impact of migration on the individuals and their families can be acute: an ever-increasing number of women health-care professionals are migrating, with family and social consequences that are not yet fully understood.
At its 292nd (March 2005) Session, the Governing Body of the International Labour Office approved the launching of an Action Programme on "The International Migration of Health Service Workers: The Supply Side" for the 2006-07 biennium. The overall aim of the Action Programme is to develop and disseminate strategies and good practices for the management of health services migration from the supplying nations' perspective. The programme relies on collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Six health-care worker supplying countries - Costa Rica, Kenya, Romania, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago - are exploring the effects of health-worker migration on these countries, analysing their existing migration policies and practices, and identifying the lessons learned and best practices.
An orientation meeting for the six countries participating in the Action Programme was held in Geneva on 22 March 2006 (see the report).
A second phase of the programme proposes to compare, contrast and analyse the findings from the selected countries so as to develop strategies and good practices that could be shared with other supplying countries.
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