Increasing Alarm in Costa Del Sol As Malaga Continues To Lag Behind Spain In The Ratio Of Nurses Per Inhabitant

THE statistic are alarming, the province is the penultimate in the country, after Granada, with fewer nurses per inhabitant in the whole of Spain and below half of the European average

The European Union has an average of 711 nurses per 100,000 inhabitants. In Spain this ratio drops to 546, in Andalusia to 413 and in Malaga to 328, the worst in Spain, after Granada (325).

A recent report, provided by the General Council of Nursing, has shown that Andalusia is among the regions with fewer resources in the nursing sector and within the Andalusian community – all provinces are below the national average and much worse than the European average.

The report also confirms that the profession continues to be mainly female. To be precise, 81% of the professionals are women.

As Euro Weekly News understands, the College of Nurses of Malaga handles more updated data and show a slight improvement in the province in recent years, however the outgoing president of the College, Juan Antonio Astorga, points out that though Andalusia has improved, so have other provinces and so the placement at the lower end of the scale remains.

The report provided by the General Council of Nursing admits that there is a “positive and continuous evolution” of the number of nurses in Spain in recent years. Exactly, from 204,485 in 2000 to 266,495 in 2013. But at the same time, it warns that “Spanish nursing is far below countries like Slovakia, Cuba, the Czech Republic or Ireland”