The forced departure of Saudi students studying in Canada will strike a blow to our health care system, experts say.In the wake of diplomatic tensions between the Saudi government and Canada, the kingdom has suspended scholarships for 16,000 students studying in Canada and ordered them to attend schools elsewhere. More than 200 medical residents and fellows from the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine are from Saudi Arabia. Read more:Saudi Arabia orders its students to leave Canadian schoolsDiplomatic spat escalates as flights, barley and wheat exports scrapped“There are so many Saudi-sponsored physicians who are here and form a huge part of who performs patient care in Ontario hospitals,” said Dr. Caroline Just, a neurology resident physician in London, Ont.Cuts to funding, combined with an increase in patients, have created a gap filled by foreign medical trainees, Just said. “Patients certainly need these physicians to be here,” she said. “That gap has been filled by foreign-sponsored residents, a lot of whom are Saudi — not exclusively — but a lot.”Just said there will now be the same number of patients, but with less doctors to treat them.“This will be a very sudden rescinding of a lot of medical manpower,” she said. “I think it will be very, very challenging and probably put a lot of strain on patients and other doctors.”U of T has trained more than a thousand Saudi doctors over the last four decades, said Salvatore Spadafora, a professor in the school’s department of anesthesia and vice dean for post-MD education.“They have enriched our programs and gone home and enriched their own programs,” Spadafora said. “They’ve worked hard and cared for people here, and go back and do the same. “It’s an unfortunate situation that we’re hoping can be rectified.”U of T’s faculty of medicine has 216 Saudi medical residents an ...
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