Germany recruits nurses from Latin America

Rio de Janeiro/Mexico City (dpa) – The weather, the food, the language: these are the things that Herbert Otoniel Pérez Victoriano from Mexico did not initially find it easy to come to terms with when he arrived in Germany from an indigenous village in sunny Oaxaca. Victoriano is a male nurse who for more than four years now has been working on the respiratory ward at the Charité hospital in Berlin specialising in infectiology and pneumology – one of hundreds of Mexican nurses who have come to work in Germany.

Four years ago, the Health Minister at the time, Jens Spahn, initiated recruitment efforts in Mexico in view of the skills shortage in Germany. Current Labour Minister Hubertus Heil travelled to Latin America for the same reason – namely to Brazil.

In early June, Heil visited a training centre run by the Catholic University of Brasília (UCB) in the South American country where he signed a declaration of intent on “fair immigration” with his Brazilian colleague Luiz Marinho. The aim is to simplify structures so as to promote the exchange of skilled labour. The Federal Employment Agency (BA) believes there is potential to recruit up to 700 nursing staff per year.

According to Gerald Gaß, Chairman of the Board of the German Hospital Federation (DKG), there is one thing that Germany should refrain from, despite all these efforts, and that is to poach skilled workers from other countries who face the very same demographic challenges. With regard to the recruitment programme Triple Win, Björn Gruber of GIZ (the German Agency for International Cooperation) says: “The Federal Employment Agency and GIZ only hire nurses where the government partners in the countries of origin are in agreement, taking into account the labour market situation in their own country.” According to the professional association Confen there are some 2.5 million nurses in Brazil. The unemployment rate in the sector was over ten per cent in 2021.

According to a Federal Government answer to a question in the Bundestag last year, 236,000 foreign nurses were employed in Germany subject to social insurance contributions at the end of 2021. Statistics show that the majority of foreign nurses come from Europe. In the same year, 2,109 nursing staff came to Germany from Brazil and 652 from Mexico.