Dispatches

Filipino nurses are leaving the country in hordes, lured by higher salaries offered by Western countries.

Joanne (not her real name) has just submitted her resignation papers to the Office of the Director for Nursing of thePhilippine General Hospital (PGH)

“I am leaving to work as a nurse in the United States,” said Joanne, who has been a nurse since 1996 and has a sister working also as a nurse in US.

Joanne is among the thousands of Filipino nurses who leave the country every year to seek for greener pastures in other countries.

In the state-run PGH, the country’s largest medical institution, about 15-20 nurses leave to work abroad every month, data from the nursing services office showed.

Joanne said that salaries in other countries are “more financially rewarding” and “tempting”.

“My sister earns as much as $34 (P1, 700) an hour in the States. Here, my monthly salary is just equivalent to a day’s salary of my sister,” said Joanne.

Exodus

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) showed that 7,768 nurses went abroad in 2005. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Taiwan, Ireland and the United States are the main destinations of Filipino nurses who left in 2005.

“Our more experienced nurses are leaving the country so that leaves us with people who have only basic competencies to work in hospitals,” said Rita Tamse, deputy director or nursing services at PGH.

Tamse said of the estimated 300,000 Filipino nurses about 85 percent are working abroad and those nurses who chose to stay in the Philippines are overwhelmed by the number of patients they have to take care of.

“Ideally, the nurse-patient ratio should 1:5. Here in PGH and other hospitals under the government hospitals, the ratio is 1:15,” Tamse added.

The situation is more depressing at some hospitals in the rural areas where the ratio is one nurse for every 55 patients, according to a study by Jaime Galvez-Tan, a professor at the University of the Philippines. “Even the hospitals outside of Metro Manila are considered as partially closed because there are certain wards that do not have nurses anymore.

“There is inadequate manpower.” said Joanne. “Although you will learn a lot from working in government hospitals, it is difficult because you have so many patients to take care of that they do not receive the standard quality care.”

Global Demand

Experts say that the nursing diaspora is expected to persist as global demand for nurses escalate.

Tamse said that demand is expected to accelerate because of the Philippines’ trade agreement with Japan and the growing need from the United States.

“We have reached a new era where the demand for nurses is ten times more than during the 60s and 70s,”said former health secretary Jaime Galvez-Tan.

Tan said that the world needs about 20,000 – 50,000 nurses—ten times more than the demand during the 1960s and 1970s—because “people from rich countries started to have longer life span, therefore there is greater demand for health care.”

“It so happen that in their demand, they are wealthy and they could pay a higher price for their services for nurses that they need. There are also push factors like political instability, armed conflicts and malfunctioning o health care system in poor countries,” he added.

Competition

Tan said that the Filipino nurses will continue to benefit from this trend and rebuffed the claims that our nurses are facing threats from their counterparts in China and India.

“If you are a Chinese and you are the only child and you see China growing as a superpower, why will you migrate to the United States,” said Tan. “There is no way that the parent s will allow their son or daughter to leave.”

He added that the foreigners, particularly the Caucasians, prefer Filipino nurses over those from India and Sri Lanka.

“The Indians do not have the smiling face and the happy disposition,” he added.

Remittances

But aside from the growing demand, experts say that migration of health workers will continue because of the Philippine government’s dependence on remittances hamper the enactment of policies to control the diaspora.

World Health Organization’s representative to the Philippines Jean-Marc Olive, said, as quoted by Reuters : On one side you have a part of the government saying: ‘Let’s export as much as possible and let’s bring back money’. And on the other side, they are saying: ‘Hey come on, we are losing all our good guys.”

But aside from nurses, a tenth of the population in the Philippines is lured by high paying jobs in other countries and is driven by widespread poverty to work abroad. Remittances from these workers fuel local consumption, the main engine of the economy’s growth.

Remittances this year are ecxpected to reach $11.87 billion, the central bank said. From January to July of this year, remittances reached $7 billion,

Last year, the Philippine economy grew 5.1 percent from 2004, a figure which is at the top of the government’s forecast of 4.8-5.1 percent. Remittances reached $10.81 billion dollars and boosted consumption that makes up about 70 percent of the Philippines’s gross domestic product.

Nurse Joanne said it’s hard to leave the country but says she has to make the sacrifice to send her son to school.

“Life is difficult here because salary cannot make ends meet,” she said.