Press Release
May 7, 2009

LOREN CALLS FOR HEALTH CARE REFORMS

Deploring the lack of health workers to care for the Philippine population, Sen. Loren Legarda yesterday (May 07) called for reforms in the health sector, including upgrading the salaries of health workers.

In a speech to the Alliance of Health Workers on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, Loren deplored that health workers in government and private hospitals, including doctors and nurses, are receiving starvation wages.

"Health workers have been performing their vital job under challenging, even brutal and hazardous conditions," said Loren, who is the chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography.

"Nurses in private hospitals receive starvation pay. A P6, 000 a month salary can't keep body and soul together. In several private hospitals, there are so-called volunteers, nurses who serve gratis so they can log years of hospital service.

"A resident physician in a public-run hospital gets a pay of P19,000 a month . This is after eight years of college study and the mandatory internship. A clerk working for the multilateral institutions based in Metro Manila receive twice this much and so is a supervisor working for the BPOs. "

She cited a study showing that a government nurse receives a slightly higher pay of slightly over P12,000 a month. But the nurse is often moved to draw from her or his own pay slip to help the needy and impoverished patients that crowd hospitals.

"Most health workers are deprived of overtime pay, night shift differential, housing allowances and holiday pay. There is also this state of job insecurity that health workers have to contend with. So-called streamlining and reorganization policies often lead to dislocation of personnel."

Loren said that these harsh working conditions are the root cause why nurses and doctors readily abandon the country and work in other lands. As a result, the Philippines is experiencing a big shortage in health workers relative to its population

The A H1N1 pandemic, which threatens to affect the Philippines, merely emphasizes the need to keep health workers at home to protect the population, she declared.

"There are not enough plantilla position for health workers. Even state-run hospitals are contracting out services, a bizarre thing in an age of massive joblessness. Medical insurance pays for a meager portion of the medical bills; we are a thousand years away from universal health care."

Loren stressed the need for reforms in the health sector. Among them are:

  • State health investments fulfilling the five per cent of GDP investment benchmark set by the United Nations.

  • The genuine primacy of education and health in the yearly budget allocation exercise.

  • A crash program to fill up unfilled health position plantillas, the modernization of hospitals, the attention to basic and primary health care.

  • And, a five salary grade increase for all state health workers up front, along with a promise to further upgrade their compensation package, plus, a year-long training and retraining program, including fellowships and scholarships in prestigious medical institutions overseas.

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