Germany has a history of hiring nurses from abroad when they are in short supply at home, recruiting South Korean nurses as far back as the 1960s, for example.

Figures from the German Federal Employment Agency show there were 759,245 nurses employed in Germany by June 2011, of which 26,959 were foreigners.

In the US, there are 2.5 million registered nurses, according to US Labor Department data. It is estimated that the country has a shortage of 120,000 full-time registered nurses each year, and this figure is forecast to grow to 500,000 by 2020.

In Britain, National Health Service figures show that more than 8,000 nurses left to work abroad in 2012, the most ever. Due to this exodus and an aging workforce in health care, the UK is experiencing an escalating crisis in recruitment of nursing staff, threatening the high quality of clinical services.

Nursing vacancies in Japan will reach 450,000 by 2025, according to the government's forecast. The nation, whose aging population has reached 23 percent, is turning to foreign nurses to help.

For example, under a bilateral economic partnership agreement hospitals in Japan have employed health workers from the Philippines since 2009.

Since Fidel Castro's forces were victorious in the Cuban revolution in 1959, the Caribbean island has sent up to 130,000 health workers overseas to fill the rising number of hospital vacancies.

Government figures show that about 37,000 Cuban medical staff are working abroad in more than 70 countries and regions.

- Yang Wanli and Zhou Huiting

(China Daily USA 09/25/2013 page6)