The British government is to tighten regulations on employment of health care workers from developing countries in order to stop draining key staff from nations hard hit by AIDS, Health Minister John Hutton announced this week during a visit to South Africa. "We are determined not to destabilise the healthcare systems of developing countries. The NHS is expanding, but we're not going to do that at the expense of other countries," he said this week. National Health Service hospitals are already forbidden to recruit nurses from almost all developing countries except India, China and the Philippines, but private agencies have been allowed to recruit staff from anywhere in the world on short term contracts.