On fleeing medical practitioners and other professionals

My daughter, a medical practitioner, told me the other day that a number of her colleagues were celebrating for having passed the licensure examination for nurses. From doctors to nurses - is this something to rejoice for? These medical personnel have had a fairly good practice in local hospitals, but like many other doctors their eyes have always been trained towards foreign countries where the mighty dollar is. Gaining a second career was not therefore the reason why these people were celebrating. Getting a chance to work in foreign hospitals was the reason.

My daughter said her doctor friends are getting out also because things are rather messy in this country. I countered that precisely because things are not what they should be, the more reason people like them ought to stick around if only to help the country get back on its feet. Yet even as I said this I knew I was being impractical and perhaps unreasonably idealistic. For how could one convince a Filipino to stay when his own immediate needs are pushing him out of his country's boundary? These days self-interest tends to tamp down the larger interest of society. Bahala na mo diha, seems to be the mind set.

But in the early years of our nationhood love of country was a controlling impulse in the Filipino. That's why we had a Biac-na-bato and a Tirad Pass, and later, a Bataan and a Corregidor. That's why in Cebu too we had a Tres de Abril and later a Tabunan and Malalay. The call then was for national survival and bleeding though the country was, the Filipino did not run away. Following in the footsteps of our National Hero (who came home from a life of safety and ease in Europe to face the firing squad), the Filipino stuck it out to shed his blood, if not, to serve his country in other ways.

We do not begrudge of course the unskilled workers and laborers as well as the semi-skilled ones (about 65 percent of today's OFWs) who are in other countries hewing a living for their families. Finding no employment hereabouts, they have taken risks and endured loneliness in foreign environment all for the sake of gaining a better quality of life. To them we doff our hat in recognition of the more than 6 billion pesos they are sending home every year, money which is critical in beefing up our economy. Modern day Filipino heroes, they truly are.

But we are sad to see doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals who are abandoning their jobs here in search of better paying ones in foreign lands. At this point in our socio-economic endeavors, the services of professionals and highly trained technologists are in dire need because there are the cogwheels of development. But how can development take place when these people are fast exiting to foreign shores? Already there's a dearth of medical workers in the country. Even in urban centers medical specialists are in short supply. In the countryside even the shadow of a doctor cannot be seen. In schools good teachers are a must, but right now there's an exodus of these to other countries. With the cream of our teaching force disappearing, who will be left to man our schools? Poor as their outputs are at present, the worse is yet to be seen.

As usual our schools are turning out professionals by the tens of thousands every year. But again, the more competent ones easily find their way abroad. This is brain drain, of course, and for decades it has been going on. Yet no intervention has been taken to check its damaging effect upon the country's economy.

We should have learned a lesson from our neighbor, Taiwan. At the time it was on take-off stage as a developing country, it campaigned intensively for the return of its expatriate PhDs and top brains in science and technology as well as its five-star CEOs. These they hired with attractive remunerations plus perks that were comparable to what they were enjoying in other countries. The result was an inflow of development experts who spearheaded the island's rise as an economic powerhouse in Asia.

In our country, the reverse is happening: Our own science and technology wonder men are fleeing while those already abroad are not coming back, not while they are still productive.