Two House Members called on the government to provide better working conditions, wages and opportunities to the country’s health workers to build a strong and resilient healthcare system in the country, as well as encourage healthcare workers to stay in the country rather than work abroad.
Nueva Ecija 3rd District Representative Ria Vergara and ACT Teachers Party-list Representative France Castro made the call during their respective privilege speeches.
“The problem (migration of health workers) has only worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Vergara said that “The problem (migration of health workers) has only worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” citing the findings of Dr. Giorgio Cometto, an expert on health workforce issues in the World Health Organization, which showed migration of health care workers from low-income countries to high-income ones increasing by 60 percent from 2006 to 2016.
“The increase,” according to the legislator, “highlights the urgent need to act quickly. As policy makers, it is imperative that we act quickly to address the mass migration of our health care workers and the negative impact this is causing in our health care sector.”
“The country has an annual shortage of 127,000 nurses and 104,000 doctors.”
The lawmaker also shared the 2022 finding during the Committee Appropriations meeting recently about the 127,000 nurses and 104,000 doctors annual shortage in the country.
To address the shortage of health care workers, she suggested, among others, for government to:
1) implement a policy and program framework that stresses the production and retention of skilled workers, along with regulating the private agencies involved in recruitment;
2) invest in education and training programs for health care workers;
3) offer competitive wages and better working conditions to retain them;
4) strengthen regulation of recruitment agencies; and
5) establish bilateral agreements between countries to manage the migration of health care workers, as expressed in the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.
Castro, for her part, solicited everyone’s support for the:
1) P50,000 minimum salary of nurses;
2) the pandemic benefits payment;
3) implementation of the safe health worker-to-patient-ratio;
4) the regularization of contractual health workers;
5) increase of the health budget to five percent of the GDP;
6) stoppage of the privatization of health programs and facilities; and
7) free treatment and medicines in public health facilities.
The lady legislator saw the public support for these proposals as timely, considering that Health Workers’ Day was observed on May 7.
