WHO: Nearly 6 million nurses are missing in the world

Over the past 5 years, the number of nurses in the world has grown by approximately 7%, from 27.9 million in 2018 to 29.8 million in 2023. However, it is estimated that there is still a shortage of 5.8 million professionals to meet the health needs of the global population. This is what emerges from the report "State of the World's Nursing 2025", published by the World Health Organization and the International Council of Nurses on the occasion of International Nurses Day, which is celebrated today. "This report contains encouraging news, for which we congratulate the countries that are making progress", said the Director General of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "However, we cannot ignore the inequalities that still characterize the global nursing landscape". The most evident of the inequalities is the distribution of professionals: 78% of the world's nurses are concentrated in countries that represent only 49% of the global population. So, part of the world - particularly low- and middle-income countries - is suffering from a serious shortage of nurses. In these areas of the world, in addition to the difficulty of training and then hiring professionals, the main challenge is to retain them. The report shows that 1 in 7 nurses in the world, and 23% in high-income countries, was born abroad. In high-income countries, the challenge is to prepare to manage the high levels of nursing retirement expected in the coming years and to review the dependence on professionals from abroad. This adds to a decline in the attractiveness of the profession. From this last point of view, Italy is among the last in the world: according to the report, which cites data from the OECD-PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey, in our country just over 0.8% of high school students are considering the profession of nursing, almost ten times less than that found in Japan, which leads the world rankings.