At the end of last year, public hospitals and polyclinics had more than 2,100 foreign doctors in their employ, and the number continues to grow as Singapore faces a shortage of trained medical staff.
Most are primary care doctors with only 477 foreign specialists, a spokesman for the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) told The Straits Times.
In contrast, the private sector had only 156 doctors who were neither Singapore citizens nor permanent residents, according to the SMC's 2014 annual report.
To meet the demand for doctors, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has worked with the Education Ministry to raise the number of students accepted into medical schools here from 350 in 2012 to 460 this year.
