POEA: 3,000 nurses have gone abroad

Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) administrator Bernard Olalia said they had submitted the necessary data on nurse deployments and projections to the Cabinet’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to decide on a policy course on sending more health workers abroad. He said around 3,000 nurses had already gone abroad in the first three months of the year and the government had to decide soon whether to lift the 5,000 limit on nurses’ deployment. —DONA Z. PAZZIBUGAN