For the first time, over 10,000 foreign doctors are active in Belgium, De Morgen reports, citing figures from the OECD.
At the start of the century, just 4% of doctors were trained abroad. Now, this has risen to 14%. With the second-lowest proportion of doctors in the EU – with just 324.8 doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants as of 2021 – Belgium is in urgent need of new doctors.
Doctors brought in from other countries can help alleviate the shortage of home-grown medical candidates.
Furthermore, the new doctors are not exclusively from neighbouring countries. While the largest number of doctors come from just across the border, notably 1,620 from France and 1,590 from the Netherlands, doctors from Romania (1,558) and other Eastern and Southern European countries are increasing in numbers.
According to Dirk Devroey, Professor of General Medicine at VUB, the arrival of foreign doctors also causes issues, especially for Dutch-speaking patients.
Few of the new arrivals speak Dutch, often using English as their language of operation. If this trend continues, he warns, Flemish people may no longer be able to get help from a doctor in their own language.
The doctor is advocating for an increase in the quota of Belgian students who are allowed to graduate as doctors, as well as setting language tests for foreign doctors.
Despite language-related issues, 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.
