The increase in the number of nurses working in public healthcare was among the highest in Europe between 1990 and 2019, according to a study published in medical journal The Lancet.
The figures cover the period before Malta experienced an exodus of foreign nurses, poached by the UK in recent years.
According to the study, carried out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and published in The Lancet, the number of nurses and midwives rose by 2.7 per cent in the period reviewed.
This rate was the same as Portugal's and was the second-highest in Europe. With an increase of 3.2 per cent, Spain registered the greatest increase.
Over the same period, the UK had one of the lowest increases, at 0.5 per cent.
According to the study, in 2019 Malta had 105.3 nurses and midwives per 10,000 people. Almost three decades before, in 1990, the figure stood at 48.3 per 10,000 people.
In a Tweet on Tuesday, Health Minister Chris Fearne highlighted the study and said more young people need to be encouraged to take up the profession.
In recent years, especially as countries struggled with staff shortages because of the pressures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Malta experienced a dramatic decline in the number of nurses.
Many of Malta's nurses come from abroad and in 2021, an estimated 22 per cent of the total number of these third-country national nurses left the island to work in other countries, namely the UK, for better pay and conditions.
British media reported this week that half of the new nurses and midwives that registered to work in the UK in the past year have come from abroad.
Health authorities began to see the trend towards the end of 2020 when many nurses suddenly applied for long leave.
In March, during the election campaign, the nurses' union warned the Labour Party that its health proposals would be useless without nurses to implement them.
According to the union, aside from hundreds of nurses leaving the island for better conditions in other countries, an increasing number of nursing students are opting to train as doctors upon graduating.