THE SUPPLY OF HEALTH MAN POWER

Philippine Setting

What is the present situation of the Philippines's supply and demand for health care services?
The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) (Filipino:Kagawaran ng Kalusugan) is the principal health agency in the Philippines. It is the executive department of thePhilippine Government responsible for ensuring access to basic public health services to all Filipinos through the provision of quality health care and the regulation of providers of health goods and services.

 There was substantial migration of physicians and nurses to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, The Department of Health had made efforts to provide every barangay with at least minimum health care, but doing so was both difficult and expensive, and the more remote areas inevitably received less attention. The Philippines has a dual health care system consisting of modern (Western) and traditional medicine.

 Lured by higher salaries abroad and fed up with political instability at home, over 100,000 nurses -- including former doctors -- have left the Philippines in the last decade and are now working overseas, .of the roughly 1,600 private hospitals in the country, only 700 were now operational due to the shortage of nurses and doctors. the nurses who remain in the Philippines are overwhelmed by the number of patients they must take care of. At some hospitals on the southern island of Mindanao, there is one nurse for 55 patients,

Even at the government-run Philippine General Hospital in Manila, the country's largest medical institution, the nurse-topatient ratio is 1-to-30 as of 2005.

As of 1995
Total population in 1995: 69,282,000

Number of physicians per 100,000 population (1993): 11

Number of medical schools: 28

 As of 2010

Countrys Population is 91,983,000

As of 2004
In 2004, there was one physician for every 880 people, one nurse for every 235, one dentist for every 1800, and one pharmacist for every 1664. However, these ratios have most likely changed, especially with the exodus of nurses in the past five years. The country is purportedly the leading exporter of nurses to the world and the second major exporter of physicians.

According to World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office (2004)

PROFESSION NUMBER RATE PER 1000 POPULATION

PHYSICIANS DENTIST PHARMACIST NURSES MIDWIVES

93,862 45,903 49,667 352,398 136,036

1.14 0.55 0.60 4.26 1.65

In 2007
56,000 number of doctors in the Philippines

9,000- number of Filipino doctors that retrained to become nurses abroad

5,000- number of doctors-turned-nurses that have already left for abroad 1,800 number of physicians who pledged to remain in the Philippines for the next 3 years 2,200 number of doctors that refused to sign the pledge 25% percentage of overseas nurses provided by the Philippines worldwide

 The Philippines has about 95,000 or about 1 per 800 people with about 1,700 hospitals where 60% are private totaling 85,000 beds. An expat in the Philippines shared how cheap it is in the Philippines in the Rest of the World Expat Forum last August 7, 2009

The country is purportedly the leading exporter of nurses to the world

The Philippines supply the 25% of all nurses Worldwide

If you take all the NLE (Nurse Licensure Exams) data from 2000 to 2008, you will find out that there had been 224, 977 registered nurses for that 8 year-period.

SO, WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE ALL THOSE FILIPINO NURSES?

Gone with the wind