The Department of Health (DOH) is studying an “incentive program” to help the local health sector cope up with the continuous migration to other countries of health professionals, especially nurses.
DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said that more than half of Filipino nurses opt to leave the country and work abroad and that the trend is not ending soon.
“We are seeing this trend na mukhang magtutuloy-tuloy. That’s why we would like an incentive program,” she said via an interview with ANC.
“You get our nurses? You give us scholarships so that we can train our people and have expertise and bring them back here,” referring to countries who would be getting Filipino nurses.
Vergeire said the DOH knows the reality that more than half of Filipino nurses find jobs abroad.
“Out of all those produced for the country, about only 30-40 percent stay and work for us,” she said.
“Sixty percent of what we produced are going abroad or leaving us. Maybe there’s another 20 percent staying and working in another profession,” she added.
During a past press briefing, Vergeire said they cannot prevent healthcare workers from leaving the country “because that’s their right to find more productive and bigger pay.”
— Ronald Espartinez