Just seven of 116 SUCs offer medicine programs — lawmaker

MANILA, Philippines — Just seven of the country's 116 state universities and colleges offer a doctor of medicine program — a figure that one minority lawmaker said explains the shortage of doctors in the country.

House Minority Leader Rep. Marcelino Libanan (4PS Partylist) said that Congress should allot more funding to support "highly advanced" SUCs in establishing their own medical schools to subsidize the schooling of aspiring doctors.

“Very few Filipino families can afford to send their children to private medical schools that are very expensive. This is one of the reasons why we are not producing enough doctors,” Libanan said.

“We must improve access to state-subsidized medical schooling if we want to produce a greater number of Doctor of Medicine graduates in the years ahead,” he added.

The seven SUCs currently offering a doctor of medicine program are the University of the Philippines, Mariano Marcos State University, University of Northern Philippines, Cagayan State University, Bicol University, West Visayas State University and the Mindanao State University, according to the lawmaker.

Libanan recently filed House Bill 9872, which seeks to add one more SUC to the list of those with medical schools by allowing the Eastern Samar State University to have its own college of medicine. The lawmaker previously served as representative of Eastern Samar’s lone congressional district for nine years.

“There are many SUCs that are highly capable of creating and running their own medical schools, but would they need the support of Congress by way of amendments to their charters and new appropriations,” the solon said.

A 2019 study by the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative Studies on the shortage of doctors in the Philippines found that in a span of five years, medical schools across the country only graduated an average of 3,000 students annually. 

There also appears to be a "heavy reliance" on Metro Manila-based medical schools, with nearly half or 44% of all graduates coming from the National Capital Region, the study noted.

The study said that one factor behind the inadequate number of doctors in the country is the expensive cost of medical education, which range from a low P44,000 per year in the most around P300,000 in a private one.