ambulance
An ambulance carrying the body of British surgeon Abbas Khan drives through the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria December 21, 2013. The British surgeon who was arrested last November within 48 hours of arriving in Syria to offer his services as an emergency doctor has died in jail, his family said on Tuesday.The family of Abbas Khan, 32, an orthopaedic surgeon from south London who had planned to volunteer in rebel-held Aleppo, was told he would be released this week, his brother Afroze Khan told the BBC. But when his mother went to visit him in prison in Damascus on Monday she was told he had died, he said. Reuters/Hassan Abdallah

Since last year, the London Ambulance Service has hired around 175 paramedics from Australia and New Zealand. They are ready to recruit some more in September from Melbourne and Sydney. The representatives of the two cities aim at hiring about 250 medical experts this time.

The lack of paramedics in London has prompted the capital city of Britain to push for recruitment drives in Australia in a bid to satisfy the numbers. The delegation, which is to visit Melbourne and Sydney for this recruitment, is led by Lucas Hawkes-Frost, who admitted that the number of paramedics produced by the UK is unable to meet the industry demands of the health sector. “Australia has a really good reputation in terms of the quality of education provided and we’ve got broadly similar models of operations,” he told AAP.

Also, Jason Killens, the operation director of the London Ambulance Service, said that they preferred recruiting paramedics from Australia because of the quality of the training they go through. He said that out of the 175 paramedics recruited during the last drive, 100 were already in London, 30 have already been deployed and the rest were undergoing skill development training to join in one of the busiest cities of Europe.

Secretary of the paramedics’ union Steve McGhie showed his concern about the recruitment and said, “As we indicated through our industrial dispute over past couple of years, recruitment of paramedics is almost a merry-go-round ... Interstate services are poaching from each state and now we have got an international ambulance service recruiting.”

He also specified that the pay in London for paramedics is not higher what Victoria offers, but an opportunity to travel across Europe might be an exciting reason for paramedic graduates to accept the offer.

Killens, on the other hand, said that he has hired many people who were interested to work in Australia itself. The paramedics leaving for London, therefore, were likely to return to Australia after gaining a significant experience there.

Contact the writer at feedback@ibtimes.com.au, or let us know what you think below.

RELATED STORIES