Highlighting the strains facing health services in Italy, the southern region of Calabria has signed a three-year deal to draft in almost 500 medics from the Caribbean island to help overcome a severe staffing shortage.
"We must strike agreements with foreign countries to have an adequate number of nurses," Schillaci told a news conference on Sept. 15, adding that he was close to reaching a deal with India, which has hundreds of thousands of its nurses working abroad. While Italy has previously succeeded in training the vast majority of doctors and nurses it needed, a combination of low salaries and burnout have thinned the ranks -- especially in demanding specialities like accident and emergency care.
Previous governments, looking to protect domestic workers, have also made it difficult for outsiders to get recognition of their qualifications. He then contacted Havana, which sends thousands of medics abroad on international missions each year in exchange for badly needed cash or goods.The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the failings of the national health service in Italy, which suffered the second-highest death toll from the pandemic in Europe after Britain. Italy registered 191,469 deaths.
"Our salaries are among the lowest in the world. You can't always work for the glory," said Rosanna Curinga, 41, a surgeon who works in Locri alongside the Cubans. "You work so much that you easily burn out, yet you hold people's lives in your hands."The OECD database says a specialist doctor earns on average $82,000 a year in Italy against $99,000 in France, $156,000 in Britain and $175,000 in Germany.