The West is no stranger to top-quality Indian healthcare workers operating in their countries. There are many fine doctors of Indian extraction helping people in both public and private practice in the US, the UK, Australia and elsewhere around the globe. In many ways, this is the classic story of hard working migrants getting ahead and their children going to college to graduate as medical professionals. It is also, about healthcare workers migrating directly from India to fill those places in Western nations. There are opportunities at all levels of the healthcare spectrum for Indians to find jobs.

Healthcare Opportunities for Indians Worldwide

Of the 175 million people who were living outside of their country of birth in the year 2000, some 65 million of these people were economically active. The WHO report, that these figures are drawn from, warns that the loss of the medical practitioners from the developing world is significant. Highly skilled, tertiary educated, professionals lost to the developing world, means the loss of their much-needed skills and a wasted investment by these nations through costly education services. Migration figures have double since the 1970s for healthcare workers from India and other developing countries to the West.

Indian podiatrists in India-centric communities such as Parramatta in Sydney, Australia, are one such example of this globalisation of skilled labour markets. Another, is the many Indians working as chiropractors in Sydney. Migration from Indian cities to cities in countries like Australia and the UK in the healthcare sector is increasing every year. It is the case of the individual bettering himself and his family, but at the expense of his country of origin. Democratic nations, however, cannot prevent this movement, which is, generally, based on economic determiners. Only through the overall economic growth of India can they begin to compete in a globalised labour market.

Meanwhile, in places like Sydney, their communities are benefitting from this influx of talented Indian doctors and nurses. The wealthy nations maintain and improve their levels of healthcare, often at the expense of nations that desperately need more healthcare of a higher standard. This is an example of market forces not taking care of things. Health as an industry is not served well by a purely free market economy, there needs to be government intervention in health if a nation’s people are to be properly looked after. Whether restrictions on Indian doctors needing to complete a decade of national service in local hospitals should be instigated is, perhaps, a question worth discussing.