By Jeremy Laurance
London - Britain is systematically stripping the developing world of its nurses to shore up the National Health Service, despite a government ban on recruiting from the Third World.
In the five years since former president Nelson Mandela appealed to Britain to stop poaching nurses from South Africa, the numbers entering the country have risen more than fivefold - from 393 in 1997/98 to 2 114 in 2001/02.
Two thousand nurses are needed to run a 600-bed hospital in the United Kingdom.
| The government published a code of practice extending the ban to all developing countries |
Recruitment is also spiralling from other African countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Botswana and Malawi.
In total, these five countries supplied 986 nurses to Britain last year, compared with 91 in 1998/99, figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council show.
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Ministers urged NHS trusts to stop actively recruiting in South Africa in response to Mandela's appeal, but did not formally ban them until 1999. The ban included Caribbean countries and recruitment from there has since declined (although they still supplied 248 nurses in 2001/02).
Last year the government published a code of practice extending the ban to all developing countries except where the host government had invited the UK to recruit.
The ban did not extend to commercial recruitment agencies, which critics say are now doing the NHS's "dirty work".
A Department of Health spokesperson said NHS trusts were "encouraged" to use only those agencies which followed the code of practice, but they could not be ordered to do so because of government policy.
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