EDITORIAL - Why medical professionals flee

There is mounting concern over the increasingly palpable shortage of doctors in the country. According to reports there are now only about 70,000 doctors in the Philippines, which has just breached the 100 million mark.

So, to paraphrase a popular folk song -- where have all the doctors gone/gone to greener pastures everyone. Yes, they have all left for far better paying jobs abroad. And who can blame them when government has done absolutely nothing about the problem.

Doctors and other medical professionals like nurses are being neglected by government in favor of more politicized priorities. No wonder these highly skilled and licensed professionals go overseas. After all, their government pays them only P20,000 in the case of doctors, and P5,000 in the case of nurses.

Such peanuts are an affront to their humanity and an assault on their dignity. And to think these professionals have been assessed very high tuition fees while in school just to be able to serve in a calling that does not allow them a little self-respect.

Yet, look at what the government is doing. It is spending tens of billions of pesos in cash doleouts in a program whose only purpose is make the government look good. Nothing wrong with trying to look good if you look good all around.

But if you look good only in giving away your billions to the poor and then get so stingy by paying the medical professionals who take care of them mere peanuts, then you are no better than the apple infested to the core with worms.

And to think this supposed pro-poor program is not really secure, in that so many of the beneficiaries are bogus and not really poor but have friends in the right places to sneak them into the lists. If only the government used these billions to pay medical professionals properly, there would have been no brain drain.

Unfortunately, the government is totally incapacitated to walk the talk. It cannot practice what it teaches. It has failed in so many of its promises it is a wonder it is still around. If the government truly wanted to regain its credibility, it should take care of its employees -- the backbone of its strength.