WHO report on global health worker mobility

Overview

The WHO report on global health worker mobility presents consolidated data on health worker mobility gathered across diverse data sources and geographies, covering 134 countries using three operational mechanisms (NRI periodic reporting, NHWA annual reporting, and data mining from population census and other sources). It is the culmination of concerted efforts involving the three levels of WHO and effective partnerships with OECD and Eurostat, which have been instrumental to the improved data availability, particularly in the period 2011–2021.

The report presents comparative results on the dependency of national health systems on foreign workers obtained through the NHWA proposed indicators for estimating the share of foreign-trained and foreign-born health workers in the active total stock of health workers in destination countries and reveals crucial linkages between health worker mobility and SDG Indicator 3.c.1 – health worker density and distribution. The report also provides selective country profile summaries with more detailed information on the related health workforce indicators and other demographic, migration and health indicators.

The report illustrates how countries interchange in their status as destination and source countries of health worker mobility and the fundamental influences of language and geographical proximity, and the known and unknown levels of bilateralism and multilateralism operating between countries and regions.