While 45 nurses from Kerala and one from Tamil Nadu are expected to be back on Saturday in Kochi, an estimated 1,000 others are still working in the war-torn country.

Majority are believed to have been sent there by unauthorised agencies for lakhs of rupees. Salaries of those employed by private hospitals are very low and their working conditions poor – not just in Iraq but many other countries.

“Hundreds of these nurses do not want to be evacuated because of economic reasons,” says Jasmin Sha, president of the United Nurses Association. “If they return home abruptly, they will have no way to repay the huge loans taken for the nursing course and the travelling and recruiting expenses in Iraq.”

The 46 nurses, who had been working in the Trikrit hospital before being taken to Mosul by the Iraqi rebels, were not paid their salaries for three months.

4 lakh pravasi nurses More than four lakh Kerala nurses are estimated to be working abroad, according to Sha. The researcher Margaret Walton-Roberts points out in her paper ‘Nurse migration from Kerala’ that Saudi Arabia employs the largest number of Kerala nurses.

Sha said that last month alone 400 nurses had left for Europe on student visas, and in May-June 1,500 had been recruited in Saudi Arabia by private agencies. The job market for Kerala nurses in Qatar has expanded in view of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

3 sisters in iraq Kerala has for nearly half a century been a major supplier of nurses to the rest of India and other countries. The 24-year-old twins among the 45 Kerala nurses – Sona and Veena – have their sister working in another Iraqi hospital.

A substantial number of female Kerala nurses in the US, UK and Canada got married and took their husbands along, thus helping unemployed Kerala males find decent jobs in the West.

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