Dhaka, Mar 16 (UNB) - There is an acute shortage of skilled nurses both at home and abroad, and Bangladeshi girls can take advantage of it and thus pursue their own dreams, said Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus.

“We’ve three doctors per nurse…and globally there’s a huge shortage of nurses…being trained, anybody can fill up those vacancies,” he told his audience at a function at Clifford Chance, London on March 8.

Bangladesh struggles with only 23,000 nurses for its population of 145 million while 680,000 registered nurses serve a population of 60 million in the UK, according to available information.

Dr Yunus said the first batch of nurses, brought from Grameen families, would be graduated from the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing (GCCN) this year.

The GCCN, set up in collaboration with Glasgow Caledonian University, follows the social business model that prioritises girls’ health and prosperity as fundamental to ensure the health of future generations and accelerate economic progress.

On their future plan of chain nursing colleges in the country, Prof Yunus said, “Since it’s designed as social business, we can now replicate this…we can create as many nursing colleges as we want because this one is sustained one.”

He said some of the graduates (nurses) would be sent to Glasgow Caledonian University to get their master’s degree which will help address the need of faculty members for the future nursing colleges in Bangladesh.

About poverty, Prof Yunus said, “It’s not internally generated phenomena, it’s externally imposed. So, if it’s external, we need to go back and redesign the system so that nobody remains poor. We can create the world that we want…we can create the world that we deserve…the better world, safer world,” he said.

Clifford Chance and the UK chapter of the WAM (Women Advancing Microfinance) International jointly arranged the event titled ‘Bringing Grameen to the UK: An Audience with Professor Yunus’ in celebration of the International Women's Day.

Prof Yunus, the micro-credit pioneer, presented his vision on how microfinance, which has traditionally been associated with the developing world only, is relevant to developed economies.

Grameen in UK

A structure is being created to bring Grameen to the UK to help improve the lives of the neediest in the UK, unlock human potentials and break the cycle of poverty and welfare dependency.

Pockets of poverty and welfare dependency have not changed across the UK in the last 40 years and 2.6 million people, including 1 million young people, are unemployed in the UK. Meanwhile, 1 million UK citizens do not have a bank account.

The two goals of the Grameen UK are to encourage and support individuals to leave welfare behind, find jobs with a reasonable income or start their own social business and thereby encourage their own economic and personal development and that of their family and their community. And to ensure that Grameen UK branches are self-sustaining social businesses.

Meanwhile, the Grameen Scotland Foundation has been created to focus on poverty alleviation and education across the UK through the introduction and support of microcredit programmes following the principles developed by Prof Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen organization.

The founding trustees of the Grameen Scotland Foundation are Dr Martin Cheyne, Prof Pamela Gillies, Principal and Vice Chancellor, Glasgow Caledonian University and Mark Tennant, Chairman, Scottish Financial Enterprise.