No universal health coverage without nurses

Stem workforce shortages and empower profession to meet 2030 goals Over its long history nursing has evolved from a vocation to a professional discipline with the largest health workforce worldwide. The number of nurses grew from 27.9 million in 2018 to 29.8 million in 2023, but an estimated 5.8 million global shortage persists.1 According to the 2025 report on the state of the world’s nursing from the World Health Organization and the International Council of Nurses (ICN), which represents the profession worldwide, most low and middle income countries are unlikely to meet their goals to achieve universal health coverage and better healthcare outcomes by 2030.1 Action is urgently needed to fill workforce gaps, improve pay and working conditions, minimise the harms of nurse migration, encourage gender balance and reduce the gender pay gap in the profession, and ensure nurses benefit fully from digital innovation. Global differences in workforce numbers are stark: high income countries have more nurses per capita than low and middle income countries. The Americas region, for example, has 72.2 nurses per 10 000 population, compared with 17.4 in the South East Asia region,1 with wide variation among countries: the Philippines has 47.9 and India 17.2. …