Aquino gov’t eyes incentives to curb exodus of RP nurses to other countries

President Aquino’s administration will look for incentives to curb exodus of nurses and doctors from the Philippines to other countries.

Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Enrique Ona gave this assurance, warning the exodus must stop as continuing decline in such professionals’ availability is jeopardizing health care nationwide.

“Global demand for health professionals is tremendous so it all boils down to giving them incentives to stay,” he said at Kapihan sa Sulo forum yesterday.

Ona further raised the need for increasing local availability of health care professionals, noting government will boost implementation of its Doctors to the Barrio program.

He said government had made plans earlier to establish during the next six years some 120 district hospitals and over 1,000 community health centers nationwide.

“This aims to help meet health needs of some 30 million marginalized people in the country,” he said.

Such people can’t afford paying the P100 monthly premium for their respective health insurance, he added.

Ona said the rural areas nationwide continue to suffer from lack of nurses even if the Philippines produces annually some 120,000 such professionals, about half of whom pass government’s nursing licensure examination.

An increasing number of Philippine doctors are shifting to nursing since such profession is in demand abroad, he said.

Citing the latest available data, he added the country has about 35,000 doctors but around 5,000 of them were working abroad while some 3,000 others shifted to nursing already.

“What’s happening is we have an inadequate number of health professionals nationwide while the country is addressing global health care needs,” he said.

To help resolve the problem, Ona said DoH will coordinate with the education sector.

“We must ensure the number of available health professionals is proportional to what our country needs,” he said.

He added government must implement fully the Magna Carta for Health Workers nationwide.

Curbing the exodus of Philippine health care professionals is among strategies under the comprehensive health care reform roadmap drawn earlier.

Other strategies in this roadmap include increasing stakeholder participation in policy-making, hiking government’s health care budget, enhancing people’s health insurance benefits, boosting health care financing, improving and expanding the health care delivery system, protecting people from counterfeit products, promoting preventive medicine and ensuring availability of affordable medicine.

Ona said government came up with these strategies to improve the Philippine health care system so it could be more effective.

“This system really needs reforms,” he said.

Uneven income distribution in the country and gaps due to health services’ devolution from the national government to local government units nationwide further pose need for such reforms, he said.

He added the reforms should also include the increase in health insurance coverage for the people nationwide.

“President Aquino had said earlier he wanted 100 percent coverage within three years — it’s a very tall order,” Ona said. PNA