WILLEMSTAD - Additional healthcare personnel will come from both the Netherlands and the United States to relieve the overloaded healthcare system in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. This is according to outgoing Dutch Undersecretary Paul Blokhuis of Public Health today.

According to the Undersecretary, another twenty American IC nurses and eight IC doctors will help in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. With this new batch, the number of American health workers there will double. At the end of this week there will also be twenty Dutch nurses and ten additional medical doctors at work. They will work for at least four weeks.

On Friday, about thirty people will also leave as part of “Extra Hands for Care”. They have worked in healthcare before and have different medical expertise. A similar group will leave for the islands next week. According to a spokesperson for the ministry, most of them go to Curaçao.