Agusan del Sur to expand scholarships for medicine students

SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur, Philippines – Provincial officials are sending more scholars to take up medicine courses at the start of classes next month to address the shortage of government physicians treating poor patients at local government hospitals.

Scholarship grants packaged with monthly stipends and uniform and book allowances have been given to medicine students of the province starting years ago on condition that after graduation, they would first serve for eight years at local public hospitals before going elsewhere for greener pasture, should they want to.

The grants include P20,000 tuition per semester, P3,500 monthly cash allowance, P12,000 book allowance per semester, P10,000 board review support and free entrance and miscellaneous fees.

“That’s to ensure that they will have some pocket money while studying and avoid worrying for their subsistence and other needs,” Vice Gov. Santiago Cane said.

He added the grant has proven to be effective since it resulted in 100 percent passing rate in the board exams for medicine graduates.

The provincial government recommended that scholars enroll at state universities but if parents would opt to send their children to costly exclusive private schools, they would have to shoulder the excess of the prescribed P20,000 per semester tuition.

The scholarship program to produce home-grown doctors was pushed through provincial ordinances, mostly authored by Cane, to address the shortage of government physicians at the DO Plaza Memorial Hospital (DOPMH) and five district hospitals in the different towns of the province.

For the opening of school year in June, eight more scholars will take their medicine courses at state universities in the country. Since 2003, when the scholarship program started, the province has already produced seven doctors now serving at DOPMH.

But DOPMH still lacks 16 more doctors to fully serve hundreds of patients seeking medical care everyday apart from the needs of at least three more doctors each for the district hospitals at the highway towns and the remote Agusan river towns.

Last year, three doctor-scholars — Jerald Tablizo, Luzheil Melody Collao and Candy Claire Balili — started serving the DOPMH.

There has been an exodus of government doctors from local public hospitals over the past decade due to low salaries and the utter lack of medical facilities to treat the more complicated ailments of indigent patients.

The provincial government has been upgrading the hospital facilities and the salaries of government doctors to a monthly basic pay of P35,000.

Despite better working conditions, a lady physician who was a government scholar tried to ask for her release since she wanted to work in a private hospital in Manila but the provincial government disapproved it as she has so far served only four years at the DOPMH.

Medical course scholars are obliged to sign a memorandum of understanding stipulating the eight-year term before working elsewhere. However, the government doctors can take on specialty trainings while serving their obligation.

The scholarship grants for medicine students serve as the main highlight of the educational scholarship program of the provincial government.

The province also offers scholarship grants for advance education on doctorate and masteral degrees apart from college education for indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities and non-lumad (ethnic group) who are permanent residents of the province.

Gov. Adolph Edward Plaza was the brainchild of the educational scholarship program that has been operating on the belief that human development will uplift all other development initiatives of the province.

To date, the provincial government has funded the education of more than 300 scholars.  Each year, a total of P13 million has been allocated for the program.

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