MANILA: The Philippines has become one of the biggest suppliers of healthcare workers in the world but the exodus of nurses and doctors in the last five years for higher paying jobs overseas has left the country’s health system in a state of near collapse. At a summit of healthcare professionals called by the Philippine Medical Association recently delegates were told in a conference paper:

“The crisis in medical human resources is now upon us. The delivery of health services is being compromised. We have to address the problem before the health system completely collapses.”

Jossel Ebesate, general-secretary of the Alliance of Health Workers, said the situation had become so bad that the country’s healthcare system would collapse within the next two to three years.

Former health secretary Jaime Galvez Tan, who has been studying the exodus of doctors over the past five years, told AFP: “We are facing a serious problem and we need to address it now before it is too late.”

He said the demand for nurses, especially in the United States, is outpacing supply.

“Doctors are leaving for a variety of reasons: political instability, low pay, corruption, poor working conditions and the threat of malpractice. But above all they don’t see much hope for the future and the future of their children,” he said.

Tan said the fact that doctors were leaving the Philippines was not a new trend.

“Since the 1970s the Philippines has been a major source for health professionals for many countries,” he said.

“The only difference today is that doctors are retraining as nurses. For many doctors it is the easiest and quickest way out.”

Many developed countries have less stringent conditions for accepting Filipino nurses than they do for doctors.

This year the government set aside just 1.1 per cent of its national budget on health. The World Health Organization’s advised minimum is five per cent.

By comparison Vietnam spent 4.5 per cent of its national budget on health in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, while Thailand spent 7.6 per cent last year.

Tan’s study on the health system, ‘The Brain Drain Phenomenon and its Implications to Health’, estimated that some 100,000 nurses have left the Philippines to work abroad since 1994.

Some 50,000 left in the last five years, but nursing schools, which have mushroomed in recent years, have only managed to produce 33,370 nurses over the same period.—AFP