THE first in a new wave of foreign health workers have arrived in the region.

Ten Spanish nurses landed at Teesside Airport last night on their way to start a new life at the South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust.

They could be the advance guard for dozens of nurses, GPs and hospital specialists being recruited to plug gaps in the region's NHS.

Later this month, teams from 18 Northern and Yorkshire hospital trusts will fly out to Berlin in a bid to find German hospital doctors willing to move to the UK.

The hospital teams will be joined by representatives from primary care trusts on Teesside who are looking for German GPs interested in working in an area with one of the lowest ratios of family doctors to patients in England.

It follows earlier reports that a team from the former County Durham and Darlington Health Authority recently travelled to Spain as part of plans to recruit 11 Spanish doctors to work as GPs.

Bosses at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust said the Spanish nurses - who will be joined by a colleague next week - will undergo six weeks induction before beginning nursing duties.

All of the nurses speak English and are fully qualified.

Most of them are needed to work in the expanding heart unit at James Cook University Hospital.

More details have emerged of the hospitals planning to send representatives to an unusual recruitment fair at the British Embassy in Berlin on April 24.

So far the following trusts are expected to attend: South Durham, South Tees, North Tees and Hartlepool, Gateshead, County Durham and Darlington Priority Services, Newcastle North Tyneside and Northumberland Mental Health, Tees and North East Yorkshire and Scarborough and North-East Yorkshire.

More than 300 German hospital doctors have expressed an interest in working in the Northern and Yorkshire region.

So far, 71 applications have been received by hospitals with more applications coming in every day.

The recruitment drive in Germany and Spain was given the go-ahead after agreement between the three governments.

In both European Union countries there is a surplus of training doctors and nurses.

Cardiologists, radiologists and psychiatrists are among the specialists most sought after by hospitals.