80% of cardiologists work in NCR due to lack of facilities in regions —Heart Center chief

Eighty percent of cardiologists in the country “conglomerate” in Metro Manila due to lack of facilities in other regions, Philippine Heart Center (PHC) executive director Dr. Joel Abanilla said Thursday.

“Despite the many graduates we have each year, 80 percent of the cardiologists conglomerate here in Metro Manila and they leave the province. They don’t want to go there. There is no facility to use; ano ang gagawin nila doon? [what can they do there?] Only the ECG,” Abanilla said in a Senate hearing.

He raised this “real-world problem” as he asked for support for PHC’s satellite program, which aims to put up catheterization laboratories in every region in the Philippines.

“The program of the satellite [facilities] is to disperse the technology and the art of treatment, and at the same time to disperse also the cardiologists and the surgeons by providing ways to practice. So there are challenges but we have started and we have seen its fruition,” Abanilla said.

The PHC's satellite program started in 2015 and was formalized by the Department of Health in 2019.

So far, five regional centers have been established, while 17 more facilities are being completed.

Some of the facilities under the program are located at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, the West Visayas Medical Center, and the Bicol Regional Training and Teaching Hospital.

“They are already starting doing cardiac surgery. The simplest may be some simple congenital correction or bypass. So they started doing that, but the more complex and complicated ones, they still bring it to us. So we are so happy [that DOH is involved] because to do this, we need funding,” Abanilla said.

“We need the help of the national so that we can make this happen and we foresee that nagawa sa lima, so puwede for each region [five centers have been put up, so one for each region is possible],” he added.

Abanilla said that Malaysia has 110 catheterization laboratories for their population of 38 million.

The Philippines, meanwhile, only has 11 catheterization laboratories for its 110 million population, the PHC official said.

“That is relatively a high mountain to equalize but we can have some semblance of having one in each region and we find, we did a study, that the most practical, because they have the budget, they have the place, set up, manpower, are the regional hospitals,” he said.

Furthermore, Abanilla said the PHC can prioritize the training of cardiologists who will signify their intention to go back to the regional facilities to solve the problem of equal distribution of doctors in the country.

“Not only we create the facilities for them, we also welcome those who are in the area that who will most likely to practice in that region,” he said.

The Senate health and demography committee jointly with the Committees on Public Works, Finance, and Ways and Means conducted a hearing on 10 bills related to health infrastructures in the country. — BM, GMA News