AMMAN, July 28, (KUNA): The negative situation of the Arab society as a whole toward the nursing profession still poses a big challenge that further increases shortage in the number of nurses in the Arab homeland, a Saudi health official said here Wednesday.
“At a time when there are 66 nurses for every 10,000 people in European countries, the number of nurses does not exceed 32 nurses for the same number of people in the Arab countries,” Chairperson of the Scientific Board of the Saudi Nursing Council Dr Sabah Abu Zinadah said here today in a statement to KUNA.
Abu Zinadah — who currently visits Jordan with other Arab officials to take part in the second conference of Jordanian expatriates within Amman’s celebrations as the Arab nursing capital in 2010 — held the Arab society responsible for weak demand for working in the nursing profession.
In the same vein, she also asserted that the Arab society “low” esteem of nursing as a profession which, “forms 50 percent of the labor force in the health sector and offers 80 percent of the services provided to the patients.” On the other challenges facing nursing, Abu Zinadah said that the world as a whole is short of specialized nurses, noting that Arab countries in particular lack strategies that strike balance between the inputs of nursing sector and the outputs of education.
Concerning the situation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Abu Zinadah said the GCC faces the same challenges countered by other Arab countries whether those related to the lack of nurses or the shortage in efficient nurses in what, “lessens the service quality.” She also urged the GCC states to introduce the nursing profession into the national security system, saying that, “the Gulf war experience requires paying attention to this profession where foreign workers form some 70 percent of the working staff and most of them returned to their countries during wartime in what adversely affected the health sector in GCC states.” Meanwhile, Jordan Nurses Association (JNA) president Khaled Abu Aziza said in a statement to KUNA that GCC states employ 2,000 Jordanian nurses of the total 3,000 male and female working foreign nurses.