Senators push for medical scholarship bill amid COVID-19

Acknowledging the need for thousands of additional doctors in the country, several senators on Wednesday pushed for the passage of a bill seeking to give full medical scholarships to deserving Filipino students.

Senate Bill No. 1520 or the proposed "Medical Scholarship Act" seeks to establish such grants and a return service program for students in state universities and colleges (SUCs) as well as in some private higher education institutions in regions where no SUCs are offering medicine.

Covered in the scholarship are tuition and other school fees, required textbooks, uniform and living allowances, among others.

To qualify, the student must pass the National Medical Admission Test and entrance exam required by a medical school, and whose family income is not sufficient to support medical education.

The measure was principally authored by Senate President Vicente Sotto III, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, and Senator Joel Villanueva, who chairs the committee on higher, technical, and vocational education.

Sotto, during his sponsorship speech, cited 2019 data from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism which showed that 65% of physicians working in the public sector are in Luzon, while Visayas and Mindanao only have 18% and 16% of the total, respectively.

"This proposed measure seeks to address both issues of scarcity and maldistribution of physicians because the granting of scholarships to deserving medical students would aid in the increase of the number of physicians in the country," he said.

"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 added.

According to Villanueva, there are only 3.9 doctors for every 10,000 population in the Philippines—falling short of the 10:10,000 ratio recommended by the World Health Organization.

"To fill this gap, we need an additional 66,350 doctors in the country," he said.

Meanwhile, Recto underscored that the bill is a required companion measure to the Universal Health Care Law.

"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 said.

He added creating new hospitals would also be futile if these would be short of physicians.

Senato Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa noted that based on data from the Professional Regulation Commision, there are 84,000 licensed Filipino physicians but only over 28,000 are practicing in the country.

Senator Bong Go, chair of the Senate committee on health, stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic affected the health care workforce.

"Sa krisis na kinakaharap natin ngayon, maraming doktor at medical professionals ang naisakripisyo ang kanilang buhay. Nabawasan pa tayo," Go said during his co-sponsorship speech.

"Better healthcare requires a strong backbone of doctors and health professionals. If we do this, we can establish a better healthcare system and ultimately a better Philippines," he added.

Sotto recently said that this bill is one of the priority measures of the Senate amid the COVID-19 pandemic. — BM, GMA News