Canadian, Jamaican universities partner to ease nursing shortage in Caribbean

Nursing students in the Caribbean can pursue their studies via a new distance learning program with a Canadian university that aims to reduce the region's nursing shortage, officials said Saturday.

The program, a collaboration between Toronto's Ryerson University and the University of the West Indies' Mona campus in Jamaica, hopes to combat a nursing shortage aggravated by emigration and a lack of access to education, said Ryerson chancellor Raymond Chang.

Chang, who is Jamaican, donated US$634,550 (euro491,150) to cover the first three years of the program. About 67 students at UWI _ from Jamaica, St. Lucia and Belize _ will pursue the program that will initially last three years and four months.

"This is my way of giving back," Chang said Saturday in a telephone interview. "This program leverages educational media to enable the university (UWI) to effectively increase its capacity and provide training to nurses throughout the Caribbean."

Thirty-five percent of nursing positions in the Caribbean are unfilled, mostly because nurses in the region are unqualified, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

Many Jamaican nurses complain of low pay and often take jobs in the United States and Canada.

Edith Allwood-Anderson, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica, said the distance education degree is long overdue and that other Jamaican universities should create similar programs.