DOH assures senators to keep doctors, nurses deployed in rural areas

Sec. Ubial said that the proposed reduction of doctors and nurses in 2017 will not push through.

MANILA – Senator Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara joined his Senate colleagues on Tuesday in expressing appreciation to the Department of Health (DOH)’s decision to retain doctors, nurses and health practitioners deployed in the rural areas.

DOH Secretary Paulyn Ubial promised to the senators during the Senate plenary debates on the proposed PHP3.35- trillion national budget for 2017 that the planned downsizing of frontline health workers will not push through next year.

“I am pleased to inform everybody that the DOH has assured us that they will keep all personnel,” Angara told his colleagues when the issue was brought up by Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto before the approval of the DOH’s PHP149.8 billion budget for next year on Monday night.

On the line were 6,378 nursing jobs as the DOH originally proposed to cut their number from 15,727 this year to 9,349 in 2017 under the government’s Rural Health Practice Program (RHPP), in which the DOH shoulders the pay of health professionals deployed to poor and remote towns.

On the other hand, the number of physicians hired under the Doctor to the Barrios program will be more than halved from 946 this year to 435 in 2017.

The DOH clarified that the 946 slots for doctors this year was the Health department’s target in 2016 but the actual number of takers for these slots was only 373.




Since there were no takers for the Doctor to the Barrios program, the DOH reduced their target for 2017 to 436 slots.

Angara said nurses and doctors can be accommodated in the 2,587 Universal Health Coverage Implementers and 2,803 Public Health Associates slots that would open up next year.

Meanwhile, the number of dentists to be assigned to rural clinics, which the DOH has proposed to lower from 324 in 2016 to 243 in 2017, will also be retained.

Recto said that in addition to retaining thousands of Rural Health Practice Program (RHPP) hires, the DOH’s “continuing appropriations” which are unspent funds from preceding years, can be used to double its budget for medicines from PHP7 billion to PHP14 billion.

By Recto’s forecast, using DOH’s track record in fund use, “there will be PHP24 billion unutilized by the end of the fiscal year, so why can’t you use this to retain the thousands of people on the ground?”

“We hit two birds with one stone. We retain the medical workers and we increase the budget for medicines,” Recto stressed.

Despite the DOH guarantee of no end of contract (no endo), Recto called for additional safety nets that will ensure that no personnel will be separated from service “in case funds are not enough to retain each one of them.”

“We can insert a provision in the national budget which would state that the affected personnel should have first priority in being absorbed by other or new programs of the RHPP,” he said.

Another option is to insert a “firewall” provision, exempting poor, distant towns from the personnel cuts, Recto said.





While there were proposed cuts in the number of nurses, the DOH will, however, hire 2,587 UHC (Universal Health Coverage) Implementers and 2,803 Public Health Associates (PHAs), he added.

PHAs are either nurses or nursing associates who will be paid PHP19,000 a month. UHC Implementers, on the other hand, can be any licensed health professional who will be given a salary of PHP26,000 a month or a doctor whose take-home pay is PHP56,000 monthly.

To address lack of applicants for Doctors to the Barrio program, Recto urged the government to produce its own doctors under a program in which scholars will repay tuition and other schooling expenses by serving in their hometowns for four years.

Recto said the government may have to “infuse more incentives” into the medical scholarship program being run by the DOH. [By Jelly F. Musico, PNA]