Filipino Nurses are Needed in Kuwait to Help Improve Kuwait’s Health Services
Filipino Secretary of Labor and Employment, Marianito D. Roque, met with Visiting Kuwaiti Minister of Health Ali Al-Barrak met this week to discuss cooperation in the providing to Kuwait the nursing and technical medical staff it needs for its health care services.
After the meeting, Al-Barrak made a statement to the Kuwait News Agency KUNA that he is very pleased with the high level of expertise in medical and nursing fields in Philippines.
The Minister said that the meeting with the Filipino Secretary of Labor focused on boosting bilateral relations and employing Filipino nurses and other medical staff in Kuwait. The Filipino official showed great interest and understanding of the Kuwaiti ministry’s needs and assured that his country was prepared to help in this issue, Barrak said.
On the other hand, Assistant Undersecretary for medical services support affairs in the Ministry of Health Dr Yousif Al-Nusif, stressed the importance of boosting health services cooperation with Philippines, to benefit from specialized human resources of high professional standards.
Al-Nusif told KUNA, “The minister of health and his accompanying delegation’s meetings with the Filipino Secretary of Labor, included discussions on bringing specialized Filipino nursing staff to Kuwait.” He asserted that the Philippines is one of the leading countries in field of nursing, as it has 450 nursing and medical care institutes.
He clarified that the lack of nursing staff in Kuwait is due to the major expansion in medical services and facilities, in conformity with His Highness the Amir’s wishes to increase hospital capabilities in the country.
Philippine Government Still Optimistic About More Job Opportunities for Pinoy Nurses
The Philippine Information Agency (PIA) revealed that Pinoy nurses will still be very much in demand in the near future in developed countries.
This comes after the government helped the hiring of Filipino nurses in the Middles East which remains consistently high while Australia needs 200T Filipino nurses. Other countries that are opening up for Filipino nurses are Japan, Spain and Canada while deployment of Filipino nurses for the United Kingdom has dwindled.
The United States government, on the other hand, is fast tracking the nursing education for training their local nurses which might affect the number of deployment of Filipino nurses wanting to migrate there. This is expected to be counteracted by two house bills pending in US Congress that will open the hiring of foreign nurses to address the shortage of healthcare professionals in the US.
US Labor Department estimates that they will need 500,000 nurses between 2016 until 2025 as there will be millions of elderly people within this period and training their local nurses will not be enough to attend to the needs of the growing aging population.
PIA has acknowledged news report that there are 400T Filipino nurses left without employment as deployment for nurses abroad has slowed.
This is why it is extremely important for the Philippines to uplift the quality of the nurses today especially in the communication skills as well as hands-on experience as these will be the edge of the Filipino nurses when they work overseas.