AS the North-East welcomed the latest influx of foreign doctors, hospital bosses revealed they are off to the Philippines to recruit up to 50 nurses.

Looking relaxed and confident, six newly-arrived Spanish GPs, who will fill vacancies in County Durham, dodged showers and posed for photographs outside Durham University.

Part of a growing number of foreign doctors and nurses being imported into the region, they will shortly be joined by the nurses from the Philippines.

Nurses from Spain are now working at the heart unit at James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, and German consultants are being lined up to fill vacant hospital posts in the region.

Members of North Durham Health Care NHS Trust board will be told today that a team of senior nurses representing the trust will travel to Manila shortly to recruit up to 50 nurses.

Feedback from other UK hospitals suggests that Filipino nurses adapt well to the UK healthcare system, a spokeswoman said.

All of the new Spanish doctors are badly needed in the North-East, but the recruitment of a doctor to work in Peterlee - one of the most deprived areas of the region - has been particularly welcomed by County Durham health bosses.

Dr Oriol Armengol Badia, 43, from Barcelona, said: "I am a doctor. That is where I am needed."

He said he was not put off by British doctors complaining about workloads and under-funding.

"I know that the NHS has problems, but there were many good years in the 1950s and 1960s and I think your health service will improve again," he said.

Dr Maria Casasin, 31, also from Barcelona, said one of the reasons she had come to Britain was the difficulty of finding long-term contracts in Spain.

Dr Wassim Abdel Khalek, 35, from Alicante, said the extra money being put into the NHS made working in Britain more attractive.