Lack of vision or ethics?

In The duty on October 15, we learned that faced with the shortage of nurses, Quebec private personnel recruitment agencies and the Quebec government were seeking to bring in more than 4,000 health workers, including 3,500 nurses, from abroad.

In this competition to attract rare pearls, agencies denounced the lack of collaboration of the Ministry of Health and Social Services which showed, according to them, a “total lack of vision on this”, claiming to be able to do so to a lower cost than the ministry.

What was my surprise to learn that one of them had nearly 2,000 resumes of nurses from sub-Saharan Africa in its database. […] !

When we know the financial capacity of these countries which cannot afford the doses of vaccines their population needs to face the COVID-19 pandemic; when we know what is required of a society to train a person in nursing, especially in developing countries where resources are already limited for their own development; when we are aware that in the midst of a pandemic, all countries must be able to count on all of their resources, whether human or material, am I the only one to have felt a deep unease at the indecency of to go “siphon” precious human resources in countries much less wealthy than us and whose needs are at least just as glaring?

Just as with the resources of the African subsoil to build our electronic devices, the power that our collective wealth allows us does not give us the right to unduly appropriate human resources for which these countries have invested all the more precious resources. that they are scarce to meet their needs.

Yes, let’s have a vision, but let’s refuse it if it is not accompanied by an ethic that integrates respect for peoples and nations.

Pierre Prud’homme

Laval, October 17, 2021

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