GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) — President of Guyana Irfaan Ali says thousands of overseas-based Guyanese nurses, who left for higher salaries, could begin returning home to take up lucrative job offers.

Late Wednesday, during a campaign meeting ahead of the September 1 election, Ali said once his party is returned to office, many of the overseas-based Guyanese nurses would return before 2030.

“Within the next five years, where all the nurses who left, they are going to come back because what we are going to give our nurses here will make no sense for them to be anywhere else,” Ali said.

“They’re coming back because we are building stronger and better, and Guyana today is a land of opportunity,” he added.

Earlier this year, the government faced a backlash after deciding to hire foreign nurses and pay them lucrative salaries compared to their local counterparts.

Although nurses and other medical professionals’ salaries were increased in 2022, they still opted to take up offers mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The exodus of nurses is not confined to Guyana; recently, the Barbados government hired Ghanaian nurses, and in Dominica, retirees were rehired to fill vacancies.

Meanwhile, Caribbean Community (Caricom) Assistant Secretary General Alison Drayton told the opening of the 52nd Annual General Meeting of the Regional Nursing Body (RNB) in Bridgetown, Barbados that the region continues to face a critical shortage of nurses and midwives. With the “State of the World’s Nursing Report 2025”, showing that one in seven nurses globally were practising outside of the country of their birth, she said that underscores a growing dependence on foreign-born nurses within high-income countries.

“This dynamic poses significant challenges to the development and sustainability of health systems in low- and middle-income countries like those within our region. Accordingly, it is imperative that the region substantially increase its investments in the education, recruitment and retention of nurses and midwives to safeguard the resilience and effectiveness of our health workforce,” Drayton said.