MANILA. 5 June 2006 — With Filipino doctors leaving for abroad in droves, many to work as nurses, doctors from India may soon be hired as resident physicians in government hospitals, a lawmaker has said.
Rep. Ferjenel Biron, vice chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on health, said the Department of Health has told the committee that Indian doctors could be brought in by next year as soon as the problems of hiring foreign doctors are ironed out.
“It’s unfortunate that no one is applying for positions in government hospitals,” Biron said in a television interview. “It takes 15 years to produce a doctor, only to see them leave for abroad.”
He said doctors have been leaving the country at an average of 800 per year in the past five years.
“Other estimates show that 8 out of 10 doctors in the country are now enrolled in nursing schools, hoping to land more lucrative jobs abroad and to live there permanently,” said Biron, who is himself a medical doctor.
Biron and several other lawmakers filed in January House Bill 4955, which seeks to increase salaries of government doctors and provide educational benefits. The bill, however, has yet to prosper.
Records gathered by the House committee on health show that the starting monthly salary of a doctor in the Philippines is around P15,000 ($288), about half of what a nurse working in Saudi Arabia gets.
Many Filipino doctors are taking up nursing in hopes of landing a job in Britain, which offers the equivalent of at least P150,000 a month. A nurse in the United States and Canada could earn about $35 per hour or roughly $5,600 monthly (about P300,000).
Imminent Collapse
Biron has been among the most vocal advocates of strengthening the Philippine health sector amid warnings of an imminent collapse of the hospital industry.
In its convention last November in Manila, the Private Hospital Association of the Philippines (PHAP) reported that some 1,000 private hospitals have closed since 2000 due to lack of medical staff, and that the 700 hospitals still in operation are threatened.
“We fear for the health of the people, especially those living in the countryside,” said Dr. Antonio Chang, president of the association.
Chang noted that an average of 10 hospital in different regions of the country shut down last year, “indicating a collapsing local health care system.”
Citing the case of Masbate island-province in the central Philippines, Chang said the St. Anthony’s Hospital, which he runs, has been left with only one doctor for each of its two 50-bed hospitals, a far cry from the required ratio of one doctor for every 10 beds.
The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) had also predicted last year that the country’s health care system would collapse in two years, considering that a total of 51,850 nurses had left the country for greener pastures abroad from 2000 to 2003 alone.
Jossel Ebesate, AHW secretary-general and nursing supervisor at the Philippine General Hospital, said what the figure means is that the Philippines had lost close to 13,000 nurses every year during that short period.
More than 5,000 doctors had also left for work abroad as nurses from 2000 to 2004. Many more want to leave. Some 4,000 licensed physicians are now enrolled in nursing schools, Ebesate said.
Rep. Biron said drastically increasing Philippine doctors’ salaries would help defer their decision to work abroad, and supporting students in medical schools would ensure the availability of more doctors for the future.
“We may not be able to prevent doctors from leaving the country, but we should have a replenishment system,” Biron said.
