Summit to push better pay, benefits for docs, nurses abroad

Health professionals met yesterday for the first Philippine Medical Summit and pushed for the adoption of a bilateral agreement between the Philippines and countries hiring Filipino doctors and nurses.

Part of the accord calls for an "equitable compensation" for every medical practitioner that the Philippines loses to foreign hospitals.

Dr. Armand Crisostomo, a member of the summit’s steering committee and treasurer of the Philippine College of Surgeons, said although Filipino doctors and nurses contribute significantly to the P9 billion in dollar remittances sent to the country in 2004, the health sector does not benefit from it.

But with the proposed compensation scheme, Crisostomo said they could improve health services and medical education in the country.

"We really need to replace those who already left and are about to leave. We have to make the medical profession attractive once again," he added.

The money will also be used to encourage the exchange of technology and information between the Philippines and the importing countries.

Crisostomo said such a scheme is now being implemented in countries like Turkey, which is receiving remuneration from Germany.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, compensates South Africa for the workers it sends by setting up scholarship funds.

Health professionals organized the summit to address the continued exodus of Filipinos doctors to countries like the United States,

Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Singapore and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

These countries are forced to hire foreign nurses because of their aging population and their own citizens’ lack of interest in taking up nursing as a career.

Around 250 doctors, nurses and other concerned individuals from 20 organizations attended the summit, which was held at the auditorium of the Philippine Medical Association in Quezon City.

They also discussed the medical malpractice bill, low enrollment in medical schools and the deteriorating public perception of doctors.

After the summit, the participants came up with a declaration that summed up their various proposals to control the migration of health workers.

According to Crisostomo, while other countries are also experiencing a shortage of doctors, the Philippines’ case is "unique" because the doctors are leaving as nurses and not as physicians.

Crisostomo said the ideal doctor-patient ratio prescribed by the World Health Organization is one doctor for every 10,000 patients, but the ratio in the Philippines is at one doctor to 20,000 to 30,000 patients.

Former health secretary Jaime Galvez-Tan estimates that from 2001 to 2004, around 3,000 doctors had already left the Philippines while another 3,000 are now studying nursing.

"I think the turning point was in 2001 when 18,000 nurses were exported… Never in our history did we export that many," said Tan, the executive director of the University of the Philippines’ National Institute of Health.