Wooing Filipino doctors

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor CHERYL CRUZ Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The chairman of the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Government Reorganiztion, Antonio Trillanes IV, has filed Senate Bill 319 that seeks to address the shortage of doctors in the Philippines by increasing the salary and providing more benefits to government doctors to stop the exodus of Filipino physicians overseas to high-paying jobs.

With the present wage rate of doctors in provincial and municipal hospitals at about P26,878 a month or salary grade level 16, and doctors employed by the Department of Health getting P39,493 a month or salary grade 21, many doctors are opting to leave the country and seek employment abroad. The situation is such that despite the sub-par quality of health services in this country, World Health Organization has tagged the Philippines as the second largest exporter of physicians next to India.

Trillanes is proposing that the minimum salary of state physicians should not be lower than salary grade 27 or P62,670. He is also pushing for an annual loyalty pay equivalent to P50,000 to government doctors who have rendered at least three consecutive years of service to the country. The bill also provides for monthly allowances for transportation, food, and medical needs as well as seeks to provide educational grants not exceeding P200,000 to government physicians who have rendered at least five years of continuous service.

The Senator rues that the doctor-patient ratio in the Philippines is 1 doctor per 28,493 patients that is a far cry from the ideal prescribed by the WHO that should be 1 is to 1,000 and hopes that this proposed bill can staunch the exodus of doctors from this country.

Unlike the Overseas Foreign Workers who have been hailed time and again as saviors by those who value their contributions to the economy, government doctors who have chosen to stay and serve their country and its people are among this country’s true unsung heroes. It would do well for their country to give them a few more reasons to stay.*