Dear theodor-ga,
The World Health Organisation has a database of the Global Atlas of
the Health Workforce which one can search. You can search for the
global total, by continent, by region or country. According to this
database there are 14,465,439 nurses wordwide.
Go to
http://www.who.int/globalatlas/dataQuery/default.asp
Select > Basic Data
Select > All nurses, total number> latest available
Click > Add
Select> World
Click > All countries
Click > Add
Click > Latest available data
Submit request.
The results should now appear listing the country name and numbers of
nurses in that country.
Data Source
?Data were provided to WHO regional offices by ministries of health
and other national bodies that work with HRH statistics. These bodies
also identified the sources of their data, mainly administrative
records. The data were cross-checked with alternative sources such as
censuses, labour force surveys, records from national and
international professional associations or recent publications. The
verified data were then sent to countries for validation as needed. To
construct the density ratios, population estimates were taken from the
United Nations Statistics Division.?
http://www.who.int/globalatlas/default.asp
The International Council of Nurses which has nurses? associations in
over 125 countries. They estimate that they represent 12 million
nurses worldwide.
http://www.icn.ch/
?The International Council of Nurses is a federation of national
nurses' associations in more than 125 countries. Founded in 1899, the
ICN represents the more than 12 million nurses working for improved
health worldwide.?
http://www.icn.ch/PR18_04.htm
Christine Hancock President International Council of Nurses: ?Globally
there are over 12 million nurses and midwives, making us the largest
group of health professionals worldwide.?
http://www.icn.ch/geneva/PresSp_ClosCerE.pdf
I hope this answers your question. If it does not, or the answer is
unclear, then please ask for clarification of this research before
rating the answer. I shall respond to the clarification request as
soon as I receive it.
Thank you
answerfinder
Search strategy
"million nurses" led me to a reference to the WHO web site
://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22million+nurses%22+&btnG=Search&hl=en |