Belgium has the second lowest proportion of doctors in the EU, a recent study has found.
According to a report published on Friday by Eurostat, the EU's official statistics office, there were 324.8 doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants in Belgium in 2021: the lowest per capita ratio in the bloc apart from France (318.3).
Greece registered the highest proportion of doctors, with a ratio almost double that of Belgium (629.2 per 100,000 inhabitants). Portugal posted the second highest proportion, at 562.0 per 100,000 people.
Credit: Eurostat
'Dying in silence'
Eurostat's study comes as hospitals across Belgium have fallen under increasing strain as staff shortages, burnout, and the residual effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have pushed the country's medical sector close to breaking point.
According to the Federal Centre for Health Care Expertise (KCE), the current ratio of nurses to patients is half the officially recommended amount (1:10 rather than 1:5). Inadequate staff numbers also recently caused Belgium's Health Ministry to remove 5% of available hospital beds across the country.
In a recent interview with La Dernière Heure (DH), Laurence Hody, the Chief Nurse in Cardiovascular Surgery at Saint Luc University Hospital, explained that staff shortages are largely a result of insufficient medical school enrolments.
"For ten years, the situation has deteriorated and we are not seeing many students applying and arriving in schools," Hody said. "On the ground, colleagues are suffering and we are no longer able to teach the job properly to students on an internship... We are dying in silence. Everyone was talking about us during Covid, but it is as if there is no consideration for us anymore."
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Hody's concerns were echoed by Evelyne Magerat, a former nurse and current representative of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions of Belgium (ACV/CSC).
"A lot of people have resigned, which has increased the workload, and there are not enough students coming out of school to fill the gap," she said. "It is a vicious circle that aggravates the situation in the hospital."
Despite suffering from a scarcity of physicians, Belgium registered the second highest ratio of physiotherapists in the EU, at 215.9 per 100,000 people: well above the bloc's average of 136.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, and just slightly below Germany's ratio of 234.4 per 100,000 people.
Romania, by contrast, registered the lowest proportion of physiotherapists, at 12.7 per 100,000.
