The Health Secretary of the German state of Saxony, Petra Köpping, will travel to Brazil this week with the aim of recruiting labor to reinforce the state’s medical teams.
Köpping, from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the same party as the Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, embarks next Tuesday (23/1) heading to Recife, where he should stay until January 28th. She will be accompanied by managers from several clinics in Saxony.
The Secretary of Health informed that the trip aims to pave the way for mainly health institutions and smaller hospitals in the state to find the professionals they urgently need, especially nurses, amid the shortage of labor.
According to Köpping, the recruitment of Brazilian professionals is a measure in which both sides win. “Brazil is not a country where there is a loss when people leave. Of course it is not possible to recruit [profissionais] in countries that have their own shortage problem”, he pondered.
Among the members of the Köpping delegation will be managers from the Vamed Schloss Pulsnitz Clinic, specialized in neurological and neurosurgical rehabilitation. The institution in the city of Pulsnitz, near Dresden, has Brazilian professionals on its team.
Köpping stated that Clínica Vamed does this recruitment of foreigners “wonderfully”. “[A clínica] There is a person responsible for integration who takes care not only of integration within the company, but also of what foreign specialists can do in their free time.”
Ultraright condemns trip
The ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Saxony reacted to Petra Köpping’s trip to Brazil in a note titled “What does Köpping do in Brazil? She trains German professionals instead of Brazilians!”
The text states that the “trip will likely cost a lot of taxpayer money.” It also blames the labor shortage on Köpping itself, which, according to the AfD, “has driven many nursing professionals out of the sector with its discriminatory vaccination requirement.”
In 2022, vaccination against Covid-19 became mandatory for healthcare professionals in Germany. The measure was approved by the German Parliament (Bundestag) and later confirmed by the country’s Federal Constitutional Court.
In the note, the AfD also says that “thousands of Ukrainians in Saxony are receiving citizenship benefits instead of being encouraged by the secretary to work”. And he accuses Köpping of wanting to take advantage of the trip to Brazil to have a “pleasant work trip”.
German authorities have been categorical in stating that hiring qualified foreign professionals is essential to compensate for the lack of labor. “We need immigration,” said Andrea Nahles, head of the German Federal Labor Agency, last year, when data showed that the shortage of qualified professionals reached a record level in the country.
The AfD has been the target of intense protests on the streets of Germany in recent days precisely because of its anti-immigration rhetoric. There are growing calls for the party to be banned in the country, after it emerged that some of its members held a secret meeting to discuss a plan to deport millions of foreigners.
The meeting took place in Potsdam in November and included, in addition to members of the AfD, neo-Nazis and politicians from other parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), of former Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, today the largest opposition party.
During the meeting, an Austrian extremist leader, Martin Sellner, reportedly presented a plan to expel millions of asylum seekers and immigrants from Germany, including those with German citizenship who have not integrated into the country.
The case has shocked many in Germany at a time when the AfD is riding high in election polls ahead of three major regional elections in the east of the country, where support for the party is strongest, including in the state of Saxony.
Labor shortage in Germany
Germany faces a serious shortage of qualified professionals in the medical field. While the number of inhabitants needing health care has been increasing, amid the aging of the population, the number of professionals in the area has shrunk.
In 2022, more than 53 thousand people began specialized nursing training – 4 thousand fewer than in the previous year, a drop of 7%. For every unemployed nurse in Germany, there are currently three vacancies waiting for candidates, according to data from 2023.
Therefore there is “an obvious lack of care professionals”, as defined by the German Federal Labor Agency. To make matters worse, the Patient Protection Foundation warns that 500,000 employees from hospitals, clinics and outpatient clinics will retire in the coming years.
On the other hand, Brazil has 2.5 million trained caregivers, and in 2021 the unemployment rate in the sector was 10%, records the Federal Nursing Council (Cofen).
The situation in Saxony, like the German average, is critical. The number of inhabitants needing care in the state increased by almost 24% between 2019 and 2021, reaching around 311 thousand people. By 2035, this number is estimated to rise to 326 thousand.
In order to meet this demand, the state government predicts that by 2035 it will be necessary to hire at least 5 thousand professionals in health institutions.
German ministers have already gone to Brazil
Köpping’s trip to Brazil – Germany’s main trading partner in Latin America – in search of qualified labor is not pioneering.
In June last year, the German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Labor Minister, Hubertus Heil, had already gone to Brazil as part of an official initiative aimed at bringing Brazilian health professionals to work in Germany.
At the time, Baerbock declared that Brazilian nurses “are already welcomed with open arms in Germany” and that, now, the federal government wanted to “expand this partnership”.
Heil, in turn, stated that at that time less than 200 Brazilian nurses were working in his country, while the Federal Labor Agency plans to hire up to 700 professionals per year.