this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Europe

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For three years I scoured the world for answers to Europe’s big problems – here’s what I found (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 hour ago by Valuy@lemmy.zip to c/europe@feddit.org
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

With ageing populations, many European economies are creaking under the strain of funding pensions, care services and health. Yet the two areas where European governments remain most politically timid are social care and health reform. All suffer from a lack of doctors, nurses and other care professionals.

goes to dig up figures

I'm not going to say that Europe is doing the right thing on health care in a broader sense, because that's a big topic, but specifically on the point of supply of doctors, according to this:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/doctors-per-capita-by-country

...most of Europe has a significantly higher per-capita rate of doctors than Japan does, which the author is holding up as the example that Europe should be following. Europe does have significantly lower rates of per-capita nurses (as well as lower rates than here in the US), but the article is talking about long-term planning rather than current needs:

Japan and Taiwan, as I discovered, started preparing for the demographic challenge decades ago.

By 2050, the number of centenarians in Japan could reach almost half a million. The proportion of pensioners is expected to rise to nearly 40%.

What the disparate destinations I studied had in common were resilience, imagination and political courage – qualities that mainstream politicians in Europe have long struggled to demonstrate. And they seem allergic to the other precondition for securing lasting change: serious long-term planning.

...and my guess is that it's probably possible to ramp up the supply of nurses more-quickly than the supply of doctors, as the amount of training and education required for a nurse is lower than that for a doctor.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 23 minutes ago

I think the ultimate challenge is paying for elder care. Doctors and nurses are one thing, but there’s just no money in wiping arses of the infirm and that means there’s a very limited supply of people to do it.

The Japanese model of having the students check in on the elderly residents below is a very good idea that allows nurses and care workers to focus on the less able; I worry that in other cultures (Japanese are renowned for their attention to detail and care) the check might go missed for a day or two though.