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Latvian health chiefs have blamed the NHS for an exodus of doctors from the Baltic state.
They claim recruitment companies supplying the British health service were "buying up our doctors in bulk" to plug gaps in out-of-hours care.
The move was "ripping the heart" out of a small country in the midst of one of the deepest economic crises in Europe.
Peteris Apinis, president of the Latvian Medical Society, said staff were being offered salaries five times better than they could get at home to move to the UK.
"The British are the most aggressive in recruiting our medical talent," he said. "They are virtually unstoppable."
Professor Andreis Erglis, head of the Latvian Cardiology Centre, said many were told they don't need to speak good English since training courses would provide them with "sufficient medical English to get by" and teach them "the procedures and principles of the NHS".
"We are having our best specialists, along with residents who have just graduated, taken away," he said.
"Latvia spent millions on giving them very high quality training, and now they're being hunted away from us."
Up to a third of Britain's primary care trusts fly medical staff from Europe into the UK regularly because of a shortage of British doctors willing to work evenings and weekends.
Reader views (1)
This is strange. Isn“t the UK producing any doctors these days or are they still running off to the US in search of higher salaries? If the UK NHS was prepared to pay the going rate for British-trained doctors, they wouldn“t need to recruit from Latvia, would they?
- Graham Rodhouse, Helmond, Netherlands, 02/09/2009 16:23
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