Philippine Health Care Downfall

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Hiring of Nurses by U.S. and U.K. Saps Philippines' Health Care SystemFilipinas Magazine, Investigative Report, Booma Cruz, May 17, 2004The shortage of nurses in the U.S. and the U.K. has triggered an exodus, putting the Philippines' health care system on the verge of collapse.Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan, vice chancellor for research at the University of the Philippines in Manila and executive director of the National Institutes of Health Philippines, is alarmed.

Researching on the phenomenon of Filipino doctors taking up nursing courses to land jobs abroad, Tan discovered five hospitals in Mindanao that have no nurses and doctors.“Only midwives are running the operations. I saw that in Sulu, Lanao del Sur, Zamboanga del Sur and two other areas in Mindanao. They cannot close the hospitals because it will give the wrong signal,” says Tan, a former health undersecretary during the Ramos administration.To Tan, what he saw in Mindanao was a clear indication that the health care system in the island, once referred to as the land of promise, is on the verge of collapse. “It’s all a matter of time. Maybe in five years--first in Mindanao and then Manila,” Tan predicts with much trepidation.Tan cites the case of a friend’s relative who was brought to a private hospital in Metro Manila. “The patient was standing before he was confined in the hospital, had bedsores and then died. Any way you look at it, that’s poor health care,” he says.Tan attributes a big part of the problem to the exodus of experienced nurses to better-paying jobs abroad.

“The ideal nurse to patient ratio is 1:20 for the ward. Now, it is 1:40 or 1:60. This is true even with big hospitals. At Philippine General Hospital, they used to get only those from the top 10. Now, their grades are 75 percent or 80 percent simply because of the shortage,” he says.The problem is aggravated by the growing number of doctors who are turning to the nursing profession.Tan says the number of doctors switching to the nursing profession is increasing rapidly over time, from 2,000 three years ago to 3,000 last year and an estimated 4,000 new doctor-turned-nurses this year.“What we have is not just brain drain; it is brain hemorrhage of our nurses and doctors,” he says.