Panic time for the Philippines: Nurses and public health

(Second of three parts)

MANILA, Philippines —  Yesterday I warned of impending catastrophe on several fronts. For the benefit of those too cool to panic, let me recap:

*Prior to 2026, our forex expenses and earnings (including OFW remittances) were in balance at about $130 billion annually.

*AI will destroy millions of not just BPO but other jobs. Those who benefit from AI will not be in the Philippines.

Higher oil prices and the steady replacement of fossil fuels with Chinese renewables will destroy many jobs in the Middle East, damping OFW remittances.

After four decades of total incompetence in tourism, it has dropped from 20-25 percent of the economy (direct/indirect), to less than 10 percent in 2025.

We need to plan for the worst: Find $40 billion of replacement annual FX earnings (or savings). $40 billion. Annually.

Each and every one of the ideas I describe will be ridiculed by someone claiming to be an authority. But before you just believe these “experts,” ask for their personal track record in competitive business.

Nursing. Nurses probably won’t be replaced with robots for several decades. Wealthy countries are aging and running short. They will suck up our already meager supply and hire whomever they can.

In crisis there is opportunity.

We need to dramatically increase our annual production of nurses and get more of them abroad remitting money.

The nursing syllabus in most Philippine nursing schools is badly conceived. Many courses are astonishingly irrelevant, like “art” and “Rizal.” Meanwhile, in many schools, only two units are for “elder care,” the most critical need in developed countries. Only two units are for “nutrition and diet,” the root of most modern diseases.

What law of physics is it that a college course needs to take four years? Most of Europe grants bachelor’s degrees in three years. Our college takes four years for the sole purpose of yielding more profit to diploma mills. Our nursing syllabus could be trimmed to two or at most 2 1⁄2 years with no loss of substance and with more time for useful subjects.

Will our “half-baked” nurses be hireable? You bet! By 2030, there will be nursing shortages of 250,000 in the Philippines, 200,000 in the US, another one million in Europe. This is a growth market, and there are few plausible sellers..

With a streamlined curriculum, lower tuition cost due to fewer years spent studying “Rizal,” and the prospect of becoming wage earners more quickly, more persons will be drawn to nursing. Universities will need to devote more resources to it. Our graduates will be preferred because of better English, more familiarity with Western cultures, and higher amiability. Elder care requires amiability more than biochemistry. Remedial English will enhance CVs more than “Rizal.”

At present we have about 300,000 nurses abroad. If we can field 300,000 more, at a rough guess that would yield $5 billion in OFW remittances.

Some say we shouldn’t be exporting our people. Why the heck not? The Swiss exported mercenary soldiers for several centuries, eventually funding their supremacy in other fields despite having no natural resources except people.

Revamp public health. While we’re on the subject of health, our Department of Health is probably doing the best it can with an annual budget of $5 billion, much of that for public hospitals. But curing costs more than preventing. We could get more bang for the buck with public education for proactive health through diet and lifestyle. All over the country, people of all ages are getting sick because they’re eating junk food and scrolling on phones instead of taking walks.

My uncle was a doctor and Secretary of the Department of Health under Diosdado Macapagal. This uncle died of a heart attack aged 63. That’s an example of how even doctors probably know very little about practical health. (My grandfather was Senate President, when that title still meant something.)

By silence, our government teaches people the wrong things about nutrition. I don’t agree with Robert Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance, but he is right that the medical establishment is absolutely wrong about food.

One thousand daily calories from carbs (recommended by AHA, USDA, Harvard) is stupid. We should be recommending just 300. Excessive carbohydrate intake leads to loss of insulin sensitivity and inflammation, and from there to diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure and colon cancer. These are proven clinical facts, yet doctors prefer to prescribe statins and insulin than to actually make people healthier.

The first choice for avoidance of metabolic-induced disease is simple: eat less rice, bread and sugar, no breakfast cereal (ultra-refined starch), no “instant” noodles. Everyone should drink more water, especially upon waking, and stop mindless snacking between meals. “Unli-rice” should be illegal.

Our people should be taught that “low-fat” supermarket foods are loaded with starches and sugars to compensate for the loss of flavor, and are ultra-refined to make you crave something else in an hour. They should learn that saturated fats in reasonable amounts have no link to heart mortality. (https://plantationbay.com/satfat). And, surprise! Pork fat is 50 percent oleic acid (beef fat almost as much), the same good stuff olive oil provides. Not many so-called nutritionists know this.

The simple message for our government is that the Philippines already has one of the shortest “health spans” in the world. The average Filipino faces 5-10 years of relative incapacitation due to illness before finally dying. This consumes family time and financial resources for the whole nation. We can’t afford this.

A well-considered information campaign would lessen our need for medical equipment and active medical care, easily saving $5 billion annually and lessening the human suffering that afflicts whole families as each elder spends 10 years dying.

That’s cheaper than insulin, Jardiance and dialysis.

(Tomorrow: A little harder, but still an easy fix)