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Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Joel Dumbigan.

Today we're heading to Bulgaria. It's a great honour and pleasure to welcome you to today's

graduation ceremony of Class 49. The Eastern European countries establishing itself as a training center for doctors from Europe and around the world.

We have students from Greece, Turkey, then Italy and Germany, Canada, United States.

Increasing numbers of students, particularly from the UK, are studying in Bulgaria because university places in their own country are so difficult to access.

I got interviews but I didn't get offers, so I just decided instead of taking a gap year and reapplying that I'd look at options abroad.

But at the same time, the country is battling with a huge brain drain of clinicians, leaving its own health service short.

At least a quarter of the students being trained in the field are leaving the country straight after the graduation.

So as international competition for healthcare workers grows,

what needs to be done to keep the world's hospitals and surgeries staffed in the future?

That's all coming up on today's program.

But we're not starting in Bulgaria.

We're actually in a convenience store on a busy street in Bolton,

a town just north of Manchester in the northwest of England.

It's the sort of place you see on every other street corner here, and it's got everything from fruit and veg to cookware, and crucially, a large selection of South Asian spices.

Just before I go back, we normally shop around probably the more traditional cuisine stores.

Mohammed Adnan Patel stocking up before heading back to Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, their spices are more traditionally cuisine for them.

So a lot of stuff that we make here and we take over just so we can get a taste at home.

Mohammed's about to start his fifth year of a six-year degree at Plovdiv Medical University,

one of the best-regarded institutions of its type in the country.

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