International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. With nurses working around the clock on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic together with doctors, EMTs and other medical staff, this year’s occasion is particularly poignant.
Doctors, nurses, EMTs and others are working nonstop to treat infected patients and slow the outbreak. Some countries can rely on a larger pool of medical personnel than others, however, and according to OECD data, Germany has 12.9 nurses per 1,000 of its inhabitants.
In the United States and Australia, that figure is slightly lower at 11.7 nurses per 1,000 of the population. In countries that are dealing with significant COVID-19 outbreaks such as Italy and Spain, there are 6.7 and 5.7 nurses per 1,000 people respectively. The figure is even lower in China at 2.7 and in India at 1.5. Many countries are getting reinforcements, though, and thousands of retired nurses have returned to the frontlines to help slow the pandemic.
Find resources for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and serious illness care here.
This information was originally published in Statista and is republished with permission.
