DOH under President Noynoy: bring in the foreign doctors

DOH under President Noynoy: bring in the foreign doctors

BY ATTY. MELANIO "BATAS" MAURICIO JR.

THANKS FOR APPOINTMENTS AS PR TEAM MEMBER: I am greatly appreciative of incoming Rotary International District 3810 Gov. Tranquil Salvador, who is also the incumbent president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Quezon City chapter, for his having appointed me as “deputy governor” for District 3810, for Rotary Year 2010-2011.

DG Tranquil told me he designated me as “deputy governor” to help him in the District’s public imaging campaign during his reign, in charge of doing TV specials for District 3810 and for the other nine Philippine Rotary districts as well, depending on the agreement of his fellow governors.

Certainly, this is a terrific job, especially because I have also been designated in a concurrent capacity as a member of the public relations team of Rotary International’s South Pacific Zone composed of the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, courtesy of the South Pacific Zone coordinator, Ms. Lyne Abanilla of the Manila Bulletin and three-time Zone 7 (Philippines and Indonesia ) chairman of RI for public relations.

My readers here will please pardon my having set modesty aside, but then, I am just very excited by the prospect of doing public relations job for both District 3810 and the other Philippine RI districts and for the entire South Pacific Region as well, especially because Lyne and I have already collaborated for the last three years on doing PR work for RI for Zone 7.

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BRING IN FOREIGN DOCTORS, DR. GALVEZ TAN: If incoming Health Secretary Jaime Galvez Tan would want an unsolicited advice on how to fight the “brain drain” among doctors and other medical practitioners who are leaving the Philippines for greener pastures abroad, he must allow doctors from other countries to come in and undertake their residency training here.

This is the only way to assure the supply, as it were, of doctors and medical practitioners in far-flung barrios and unreachable places in the country, especially because foreign doctors who are usually left out of residency trainings in their own countries would be just too willing to be assigned anywhere in the Philippines.

If he wants to, I can arrange a meeting between him and groups that even now are already engaged in bringing in foreign doctors here in the Philippines, but which are being subjected to absurd conditions by some people at the Department of Health and even from the Professional Regulations Commission.

I am sure an honest-to-goodness discussion can bring about a ready and effective solution to the on-going lack of doctors in our rural areas, a problem already causing prejudice to a lot of our countrymen, as noted by Galvez Tan himself in previous statements, and as noted by Dr. Jose S. Pujalte, Jr. last June 5, 2010.

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SIX OF 10 PINOYS DIE WITHOUT SEEING A DOCTOR: Here is a part of Dr. Pujalte’s article, circulated in the Internet the other day: “Our beloved Philippines is in a health quagmire. Some facts: Six out of 10 Filipinos die without seeing a doctor; four out of 10 Filipino babies are delivered by untrained hands; 29 million Filipinos have no access to safe sanitation.

“Add to these the mass migration of our health professionals: Doctors, doctors as nurses, nurses, physical therapists and other allied health workers. Also our next President, Noynoy Aquino, did not mince words in his campaign ad that corruption affects the delivery of health services too. What can be done?

“ Now to make sense of where Department of Health/Philhealth efforts should be directed, we must be reminded of this country’s commitment of attaining millenium development goals (MDGs) by 2015 as reiterated by the United Nations.

“We have barely five years to achieve most of these and there are five goals that touch on health: MDG #1: End extreme poverty and hunger; MDG#4: Reduce child mortality and MDG# 5: Improve materal health; MDG#6: Combat TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS; and MDG#7: Ensure environmental sustainability....”

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