Senators endorse medical scholarship bill for plenary approval

MANILA, Philippines — Citing the need to “future proof” the country’s health care system, several senators pushed for the immediate passage of a measure that seeks to grant full scholarships to eligible medical students in a bid to address the shortage of doctors in the Philippines.

During Wednesday’s session, Sen. Joel Villanueva endorsed for plenary approval the “Medical Scholarship Act” bill, or Senate Bill No. 1520.

Villanueva, in his sponsorship speech, said the country had seen a “devastating shortage” of doctors even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The passage of this measure is long overdue. No event in recent history has demonstrated with pristine clarity the urgent need to increase the number of medical professionals in the country,” he said.

“The lack of doctors in the country is even more aggravated by the fact that some doctors leave the country for greener pastures. Moreover, most of our physicians are in urban areas,” he added.

Villanueva cited a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017 that stated that there were around 40,775 doctors in public and private health facilities.

This means that there are only around four doctors for every 10,000 people in the country, he said.

“This is very far from the ideal ratio of 10 doctors for every 10,000 population. Based on our calculation, to fill this gap, we need an additional 66,350 doctors in the country,” he added.

The senator attributed the country’s shortage of doctors to the “prohibitive cost of going to medical school.”

“According to Dr. Gap Legaspi, the Medical Director of the Philippine General Hospital, the cost of a PGH medical education for five years is about P1.8 million, excluding living and other school expenses,” Villanueva noted.

He said the high cost of tuition in medical schools was “even aggravated” by the fact that more than half of the regions in the country did not have a state university or college that offers medical programs.

“Thus, aspiring medical students in these regions will not only have to think about paying for their tuition fees, but also where to get their lodging and living expenses,” he pointed out.

The measure seeks to provide establish a medical scholarship and return service program for “deserving Filipino students”  in state universities and colleges (SUCs) and in partner private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in regions with no SUCs offering medicine.

The scholarship grant will cover tuition and all other school fees, including board and lodging, transportation, and other miscellaneous expenses, the senator explained.

Internship, medical board review, and licensure fees will also be included in the scholarship, he added.

“In the long run, we hope to see to it that the medical profession is accessible to the masses. In so doing, we hope to make medical doctors and health services available to every Filipino across the country,” Villanueva said.

Among the authors of the bill are Senate President Vicente Sotto III, who is the measure’s main proponent, and Senate President Pro Tempore Senator Ralph Recto, Senators Nancy Binay Grace Poe, Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and Christopher “Bong” Go.

In his sponsorship speech, Sotto said the bill would address both issues of scarcity and maldistribution of physicians by granting scholarships to deserving medical students which would aid in the increase of the number of physicians in the country.

“At the same time, this proposed bill would require the scholar to serve in a government public health office or government hospital in his or her hometown, province or region,” he said.

“Such a situation would hopefully put a sense of balance in the distribution of doctors particularly in the government sector, which take care of nearly 70 percent of the health care needs of the population,” he added.

Recto, for his part, pointed out that medical education in the Philippines seemed to remain as a privilege to those who were well-off.

“It is against this inconvenient truth that this bill comes to light. In a nutshell, this bill allows the best and the brightest from the lower social rungs to become doctors,” he said in his sponsorship speech.

“It is founded on the egalitarian proposition that becoming a physician should be a function of intellect, not of tax returns nor of postal zip codes,” he added.

According to Recto, the country’s spending on tertiary education will breach P100 billion this year. This is comprised of P38.9 billion for the free college program, and P73.7 billion for the operation of SUCs.

“If we are spending this much…then we might as well identify priority courses, of which medicine is undoubtedly one. We have a surfeit of political science students but a shortage in medical science enrollees,” he said.

‘Future proof’

“Coronavirus taught us one lesson: We have to future proof our country. Not only are emerging diseases wreaking havoc, but our greying population requires greater medical care,” Recto stressed.

He said the bill would ensure that there would be enough doctors for the public who would respond should another pandemic hit.

“The next time a bat flies from a forest and unleashes a lethal pathogen that will bring civilization to a standstill, we have an army of white coats ready to confront it,” the senator said.

Essentially, the medical scholarship bill seeks to produce more frontliners that “we love to lionize and valorize today,” Recto said.

“If there is one unassailable truth that this pandemic has revealed for all of us to come to grips with, it is that doctors are vital for humanity’s continued existence,” he said, adding that the “best way” to honor these medical workers would be to “create a scholarship on their collective behalf.”

“Pandemic or not, this bill is the required companion measure to the Universal Health Care Law,” Recto said.

“We may give every Filipino a PhilHealth card, but it will be useless if the facility he can present that card to for treatment has no doctor to attend to him,” he added. “We may erect hospitals, but if there are no physicians who will staff them, then what we have built are white elephants.”

Earlier, Sotto said the medical scholarship bill is among the priority measures of the Senate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

/atm