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Authorities alarmed over increasing number of migrating Filipino doctors


MANILA, Philippines - The demand for Filipino doctors abroad continue to increase, raising alarms for the future of the country’s health care sector, a television report said Wednesday. In his report in GMA’s 24 Oras, Alex Tingsay said that aside from United Kingdom, Pinoy doctors are also in demand in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Australia, New Zealand and Finland. Dr Melchor Rey Santos, president of the Philippine Medical Association, said the list of active doctors in his organization was reduced by at least 10,000 doctors for the past several years. He said of the 35,000 active practicing doctors in the PMA list, 6,000 are now working in different parts of the world while 4,000 have shifted to nursing profession. “Mas maraming lumalabas kaysa guma-graduate. According to (Health) Secretary (Francisco) Duque, 53 percent na ang drop sa enrollee sa medicine (The number of doctors migrating abroad are more than the number of new graduates. The DOH said there is a 53 percent drop in enrollees in medicine),” Santos said. Former Health Sec. Jaime Galvez Tan said the crisis on Filipino doctor’s migration is inevitable. He said foreigners have so much respect and admiration to the excellence of Filipino doctors. To mitigate the looming “brain drain” in the health sector, Tan said they had negotiated for a win-win solution with foreign embassies of countries who are recruiting Pinoy doctors. Tan explained Canada, Finland and Bahrain have already agreed that for every Filipino doctor and nurse that they will recruit, they will sponsor three Filipino students who are taking up medicine or nursing in college. Duque, meanwhile, is entertaining the idea of allowing foreign doctors to practice their profession here in the Philippines. - Fidel Jimenez, GMANews.TV
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